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The Blot On 
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The Blot On 
The Kaiser's 'Scutcheon 



By 
NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, D.D. 

Author of *' German Atrocities" etc. 




New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1918, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



Uniform with this Volume 

German Atrocities 

By NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 
Illus., Cloth, $1.00 net 

A Million and a Half 
Extracts from this hook 
have heen issued by the 
Liberty Loan Committee! 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 



DEL 28 1918 
'©CU5087:i8 



Contents 

I. The Arch-Criminal . . .11 

1 . The Kaiser's Hatred of the United 
States. 

2. The Kaiser's Character Revealed 
in His Choosing the Sultan for His 
friend. 

3. Pershing's Charges versus the 
Kaiser. 

4. Who Taught the Kaiser That a 
Treaty Is a Scrap of Paper f 

5. The Plot of the Kaiser. 

II. The Judas Among Nations . 31 

1. The Original Plot of the Members 
of the Potsdam Gang. 

2. The Berlin Schemers and Their 
Plot. 

3. German Superiority a Myth That 
Has Exploded. 

4. German Intrigues. 

5. German Burglars Loaded with Loot 
Are the More Easily Captured. 

6. Germans Who Hide Behind the 
Screen. 

7. Must German Men Be Extermi- 
nated .? 

in. The Black Soul of the Hun . 60 

I. German Barbarism Not Barbarism 
to the German. 

7 



Contents 

2. The German "Science of Lying." 

3 . The Malignity of the German Spies. 

4. The Cancer in the Body -Politic of 
Germany. 

5. Polygamy and the Collapse of the 
Family in Germany. 

6. The Red-Hot Swords in Sister 
Julie's Eyes. 

7. The Hidden Dynamite : The 
Hun's Destruction of Cathedrals. 

8. The German Sniper Who Hid Be- 
hind the Crucifix. 

9. The Ruined Studio. 

10. Was This Murder Justified ? 

IV. In France the Immortal ! . .98 

1. The Glory of the French Soldier*s 
Heroism. 

2. Why the Hun Cannot Defeat the 
Frenchman. 

3. "I Am Only His Wife." 

4. A Soldier's Funeral in Paris. 

5. The Old Book-Lover of Louvain. 

6. A Vision of Judgment in Martyred 
Gerbeviller. 

7. The Return of the Refugees. 

8. An American Knight in France. 

9. An American Soldier's Grave in 
France. 

10. " These Flowers, Sir, I Will Lay 
Them Upon My Son's Grave." 

11. The Courage of Clemenceau. 

V. Our British Allies . . .132 

I. "Gott Strafe England "—** And 
Scotland." 

8 



Contents 

2. " England Must Not Starve." 

3. German- Americans Who Vilify 
England. 

4. British vs. American Girls in Mu- 
nition Factories. 

5. The Wolves' Den on Vimy Ridge. 

6. "Why Did You Leave Us in 
Hell for Two Years ? " 

7. "This War Will End Within 
Forty Years." 

8. " Why Are We Outmanned By 
the Germans .«' '* 

VI. " Over Here " . . . .164 

1. The Redemption of a Slacker. 

2. Slackers versus Heroes. 

3. German Stupidity in Avoiding the 
Draft. 

4. " I'm Working Now for Uncle 
Sam." 

5. The German Farmer's Debt to the 
United States. 

6. " Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth " 
Is an Ungrateful Immigrant. 

7. In Praise of Our Secret Service, 



Publisher's Explanatory Note 

These brief articles are sparks struck as it were 
from the anvil of events. They were written on 
trains, in hotels, in the intervals between public 
addresses. During the past year beginning Oc- 
tober I, 19 1 7, Dr. Hillis, in addition to his 
work in Plymouth Church, and as President of 
The Plymouth Institute, has visited no less than 
one hundred and sixty-two cities, and made some 
four hundred addresses on " The National Crisis," 
" How Germany Lost Her Soul," " The Philos- 
ophy of the German Atrocities," and " The Pan- 
German Empire Plot," the substance of these 
lectures and addresses being given in the book, 
** German Atrocities," heretofore published. 
These articles are illustrative of and supplemen- 
tary to the principles stated in that volume. 

While consenting to publication, the author 
was not afforded opportunity for full revision of 
this second volume, being again called over-seas 
just as this book was being put into type. This 
will account for the form in which the material 
appears. 



THE 
ARCH-CRIMINAL 



1. The Kaiser's Hatred of the United 

States 

IT is a proverb that things done in secret 
soon or late are published from the house- 
tops. 

Certainly everything that was hidden as 
to the plots of the Potsdam gang is, little by 
little, now being revealed. 

Nothing illustrates this fact better than 
that volume published in Leipsic in 1907, 
called " Eeminiscences of Ten Years in the 
German Embassy in Washington, D. C." 

When that aged diplomat published the 
story of his diplomatic career he doubtless 
thought that the volume prepared for his 
children and grandchildren and friends was 
forever buried in the German language. It 
never even occurred to the Councillor of the 
Ambassador, von Holleben, that the book 
would ever fall into the hands of any Amer- 
ican. The very fact that an American 
II 



The Arch-Criminal 

author found the volume in a second-hand 
bookstore of Vienna in 1914 and translated 
the three chapters on the Kaiser's represent- 
atives in the United States and the organ- 
ization of the German- American League, must 
have roused the Foreign Department in 
Berlin to the highest point of anger. 

Children and diplomats oftentimes uncon- 
sciously betray the most important secrets. 
No volume ever published could possibly 
have revealed matters of greater moment to 
Germany than this volume of reminiscences 
that sets forth the propaganda carried on in 
the United States by Ambassador von Hol- 
leben and his legal councillor for the further- 
ing of the Pan-German Empire scheme. 

No scholar can doubt the right of this old 
diplomat to speak. The Kaiser personally 
vouched for him by giving him this impor- 
tant duty. The honours bestowed at the end 
of his long diplomatic career tell their own 
story. Every page breathes sincerity and 
truthfulness. No one who reads this volume 
can doubt that this author gave the exact 
facts — facts well known to his German 
friends — in the recollections of his diplomatic 
career. 

This diplomat tells us plainly that von 

12 



Hatred of the United States 

HoUeben and himself were sent to the 
United States specially charged with the 
task of reuniting Germans who were natural- 
ized in America with the German Empire. 

It was their duty to organize secret Ger- 
man-American societies in every great city 
like 'New York and Brooklyn, Chicago and 
Milwaukee, Cincinnati and St. Louis, and to 
present to these societies a German flag sent 
from the hands of the Kaiser himself. 

Their work, says the author, was based 
upon the fact that the Kaiser had passed a 
law restoring full citizenship in Germany to 
those Germans who had become naturalized 
citizens of the United States. When, there- 
fore, these members of the German- American 
League formally accepted their restored 
citizenship their first duty was to the Father- 
land and the Kaiser and their second duty 
to the United States and its Government. 
Indeed, this lawyer and author actually goes 
so far as to give extracts from von Hol- 
leben's speech before the German- American 
League in Chicago when he presented the 
society with a German flag and swore the 
members to the old-time allegiance. 

He says that in some way the editor of 
the Chicago Tribune found out about this 



The Arch-Criminal 

meeting and wrote a very severe editorial, 
after which, he adds, that von Holleben and 
himself had to be more careful. 

Concerning the Milwaukee meeting, he re- 
fers to a conversation which revealed his 
judgment that if ever there was trouble be- 
tween Germany and the United States the 
war would partake of the nature of a civil 
war. The author not only gives an account of 
the conference held at the Waldorf-Astoria be- 
tween Ambassador von Holleben, Professors 
Munsterberg of Harvard and Schoenfield of 
Columbia and himself, on the one side, and 
Herman Kidder on the other, but he gives 
the instructions from Berlin that Herr 
Ridder could only keep his subsidy from the 
German Government for the New Yorker 
Staats Zeitung by placing his fealty to Ger- 
many first and subordinating his American- 
ism, and that otherwise Ambassador von 
Holleben would found a rival German paper 
that would have back of it " unlimited re- 
sources, to wit : the total resources of the 
German Empire." 

Here, then, is proof positive that the 
Kaiser began his efforts to establish a pro- 
German movement against the United 
States for several years before 1906 and 
14 



Hatred of the United States 

that he methodically kept it up until the war 
began. 

Through it all he claimed to be our sincere 
friend ; but he was then, as he is to-day, an 
implacable and relentless enemy, with a 
heart laden with hatred and bitterness. 



2. The Kaiser's Character Revealed in 
His Choosing the Sultan for His 
Friend 

Nothing tests manhood like the choice of 
a bosom-friend. Criminals choose bad as- 
sociates. 

Every Black Hand leader goes naturally 
towards the saloon, the gambling house and 
the dens where thieves congregate. Dickens 
made Fagin surround himself with pick- 
pockets, burglars and murderers. 

History tells us that Christianity has al- 
ways kept good company. Its friends have 
been architects, artists, poets and statesmen. 
Christianity repeats itself through its friends 
in the Gothic Cathedral shaped in the form 
of the cross, in the Transfiguration of 
Eaphael, the Duomo of Giotto, the Paradise 
Lost of Milton, the In Memoriam of Tenny- 
son, the Emancipation Proclamation of Lin- 
15 



The Arch-Criminal 

coin. Christianity has never formed any- 
close friendships with jails, gallows or slave 
ships. Men like Gladstone and Lincoln al- 
ways kept good company ; their friends have 
been scholars and heroes ; but, in striking 
contrast, consider the friends selected by the 
Kaiser. 

To the Kaiser came a critical hour ; at 
that moment he was at the parting of the 
ways. It became necessary for him to make 
a choice of friends. Like every man, his iso- 
lation was impossible and friendship became 
a necessity. 

The Kaiser had the whole world from 
which to choose. Yonder in London were 
King Edward and his son, the Prince of 
Wales. In France were certain statesmen 
and scientists like Curie. There was the old 
hero living in the capital of Japan and two 
ex-Presidents known the world around for 
their splendid manhood ; and he could have 
made overtures of friendship to any one of 
these brave men ; but in the silence of the 
night the Kaiser passed in review earth's 
great men, and finally selected for his close 
friend the lowest of the low — the butcher, 
unspeakable butcher— the Sultan of Turkey. 

At that time the Sultan had just com- 
i6 



Choosing the Sultan for His Friend 

pleted the butchery of many Armenians. 
His garments were red with blood, his hands 
dripped with gore. His house was a harem ; 
his hand held a dagger. The sea-wall be- 
hind his palace rose out of the blue waters 
of the Bosporus. 

When an American battle-ship was an- 
chored there and a diver went down he 
pulled a rope and was brought up, shiver- 
ing with terror, and saying that he found 
himself surrounded with corpses tied in 
sacks and held down by stones at the bot- 
tom of the sea. 

In that hour the Kaiser exclaimed : " Let 
the Sultan be my associate ! I will go to 
Constantinople and sign a treaty with the 
unspeakable butcher." 

And so the Kaiser took his train, lived in 
the Sultan's palace, signed this treaty, and 
hired the Sultan's knife and club, just as the 
Chief Priest Annas chose Judas to be his 
representative upon whom he could load the 
responsibility for the murder of Jesus. 

Never was a friendship more damnable. 
Beared in a country that believed in the 
sanctity of the marriage relation and in 
monogamy, the Kaiser lined up with polyg- 
amy. The treaty that he made was thor- 
17 



The Arch-Criminal 

oughgoing. He sent out word to all Mo- 
hammedans, whether they lived in India or 
Persia, in Arabia or Turkey, that they must 
remember that the Kaiser had entered into a 
treaty to become their protector and friend. 
Having become a Lutheran in Berlin, he 
became a Mohammedan in Constantinople 
on the principle that "When you are in 
;' Kome do as the Komans do, and when you 
; are in hell act like the devil " — a simple 
principle which the Kaiser proceeded to obey 
as soon as he reached Constantinople. 

Every one knew that the Kaiser wanted 
to build a German railroad through to Bag- 
dad and the Persian Gulf ; this would give 
him an outlet for surplus goods to be sold in 
India. Serbia lay straight across the path, 
and he had to work out some scheme to 
attack Serbia. Then he needed the Sultan's 
friendship, and the end justified the means — 
and the end was the Bagdad Kailroad. 

But the Turk tired of being the Kaiser's 
tool ; he wanted more land ; the Armenian 
was in his way ; the Turk was lazy, shiftless 
and a spendthrift. The Armenian was in- 
dustrious and hard-working. The Turk's 
method of living made him poor. The gifts 
of the Armenian tended towards wealth. 
i8 



1 



Choosing the Sultan for His Friend 

Once in twenty years the Turk found him- 
self a pauper and found the Armenian rich ; 
the result was envy and covetousness on the 
part of the Sultan and his people. It be- 
came necessary to bribe the Turk to stand 
by the Kaiser and his Bagdad Eailroad. 
The Kaiser's German officers, therefore, fur- 
nished the bribe. 

" Let us go to this Armenian village, or 
that, and kill the people. We German of- 
ficers will take the large houses of the rich 
merchants and move into them, and your 
Turkish soldiers can kill the old men, use the 
Armenian girls for the harem, and fling the 
little children's bodies into pits digged in the 
garden behind the house. We will enter 
the village in the morning as soldiers ; when 
the night comes, as Germans and Turks, we 
will be the only people living in the Arme- 
nian village, and we will move into their 
stores and take possession of their houses 
and their looms." 

" You cannot hang an entire nation," said 
Edmund Burke. "You must arrest the 
leaders and hang them." Burke was right 
as to the punishment of criminals, but he 
was wrong when it comes to murdering in- 
dustrious and honest Armenians. You can 
19 



The Arch-Criminal 

murder an entire nation, for the Germans 
and the Turks have practically done it. 
Ambassador Morgenthau has just said that 
the Kaiser and the Sultan through their 
forces have murdered nearly a million Ar- 
menians. But, soon or late, remorse and 
conscience will take hold upon these two un- 
speakable butchers with hands that drip with 
blood— the butcher Kaiser, the butcher Sul- 
tan, that represent earth's two murderous 
twins. 



3. Pershing's Charges versus the Kaiser 
E'othing measures a man so accurately as 
the names he gives to his favourite son. 
Most significant, therefore, is the fact that 
the Kaiser named his second son Eitel, 
or Attila. Who was this Attila who has 
captured the imagination of the Kaiser ? 
He was a Hun who devastated Italy fif- 
teen hundred years ago. The motto of 
this black-hearted murderer Attila the Hun 
was: "Where my feet fall, let grass not 
grow for a hundred years." When the 
Kaiser read Attila's story he exclaimed : 
" That is the man for me ! " First, he named 
his favourite son for Attila the Hun. Sec- 
20 



Pershing's Charges versus the Kaiser 

ond, in sending his German soldiers out to 
China, and later in 1914 to Belgium, he gave 
them this charge: "You will take no pris- 
oners ; you will show no mercy ; you will 
give no quarter ; you will make yourselves as 
terrible as the Huns under Attila." Plainly 
the Kaiser knew his men. He knew that 
they were capable of outdoing even that 
monster Attila the Hun. So he sent them 
forth to bayonet babes, violate old women, 
murder old men, crucify officers, violate nuns, 
sink ZusitaniaSy and turn solemn treaties into 
scraps of paper. 

Now over against the Kaiser's charge, 
black as hell, and big with death, witness 
Pershing's charge, reported loosely by a 
French boy, with his imperfect knowledge 
of English, translated out of the French 
newspapers on July 18, 1917. Pershing's 
brief address comes to this : 

" Young soldiers of America, you are here 
in France to help expel an invading enemy ; 
but you are also here to lift a shield above 
the poor and weak ; you will safeguard all 
property; you will lift a shield above the 
aged and oppressed ; you will be most cour- 
teous to women, gentle and kind to little 
children ; guard against temptation of every 

21 



The Arch- Criminal 

kind; fear God, fight bravely, defend Lib- 
erty, honour your native land. God have 
you in His keeping." " Pershing." 

The difference between yonder lowest hell 
in its uttermost abyss and yonder highest 
heaven, where standeth the throne of a just 
God, is not greater than the chasm that sep- 
arates that unspeakable butcher, the Kaiser, 
from General Pershing and the American 
soldier boys, who have never betrayed in 
France, the noblest ideals of service cherished 
by the people of the American Republic. 



4. Who Taught the Kaiser That a 
Treaty Is a Scrap of Paper ^ 

Each month of this war clears away 
some clouds and reveals Germany as wholly 
given over to crime and treachery. At 
the beginning of the invasion of Belgium, 
the Kaiser spoke of his treaty safeguarding 
the neutrality of that little land as a " scrap 
of paper." At the moment no one seems to 
have realized whence the Kaiser had that 
cynical expression. Now the whole dam- 
nable story has been made clear. Twenty- 
five years ago the Kaiser, in one of his 
addresses, used these words : 
22 



A Scrap of Paper 

" From my childhood I have been under 
the influence of five men — Alexander, Julius 
Csesar, Theodoric II, Napoleon and Fred- 
erick the Great. These five men dreamed 
their dream of a world empire ; they failed. 
I am dreaming my dream of a world empire, 
but I shall succeed." 

JSTow why did the Kaiser over and over 
again proclaim his allegiance to Frederick 
the Great ? How is it that he celebrates his 
ancestor, Frederick ? This " scrap of paper " 
incident makes it all quite clear. The bitter 
waters gushing out of the Potsdam Palace 
go back to a bitter spring named Frederick 
the Great. The poisoned fruit that ripened 
in 1914 hangs on a bough whose trunk was 
planted by Frederick in far-off days. 

Among many musty old German books 
recently published is a little book by that 
same Frederick. The Prussian king was 
writing certain notes for the guidance of his 
sons and successors, among whom is the 
present Kaiser. In his page of counsels 
Frederick talks very plainly about the 
breaking of treaties : 

" Consider a treaty as a scrap of paper 
under any one of the following emergencies : 
First, when necessity compels it. Second, 

2Z 



The Arch-Criminal 

when you lack means to continue the war. 
Third, when you cannot b}^ any other means 
combat your ally or enemy. '* 

Then Frederick raises one question : " If 
the interests of your army or your people or 
yourself are at stake or you have to keep 
your word on one hand and your pledge 
word and treaty is on the other hand, which 
path will you take? Who can be stupid 
enough to hesitate in answering this ques- 
tion ? In other words, treaties are to be 
kept when they promote your interest, and 
shamelessly broken when you gain thereby." 

The Kaiser, therefore, had from Frederick, 
his ancestor, this handbook on lying. In 
turn, the Kaiser gave this notion of the 
treaty as a scrap of paper to his Chancel- 
lor, Bethmann-Hollweg, who engraved, as 
has been said, "on eternal brass the in- 
famy of Germany " : " We are now in a 
state of necessity, and necessity knows no 
law. We were compelled to override the 
the just protest of Luxembourg and Belgian 
Governments. The wrong— I speak openly 
— that we are committing we will endeavour 
to make good as soon as our military goal 
has been reached. Anybody who is threat- 
ened, as we are threatened, and who is fight- 
24 



A Scrap of Paper 

ing for his highest possessions, can have only- 
one thought, how he is to hack his way 
through." 

Guizot mentions "honour and fidelity to 
the pledged word " as one of the distinguish- 
ing elements of what is called " a civilized 
State." But this puts Germany among the 
barbarous savages. Three indictments and 
convictions have blackened the name of 
Germany throughout all the world. First, 
her atrocious and dishonourable methods of 
warfare ; second, the carrying off into 
slavery of non-combatants, the Belgians and 
French, and third, the breach of the pledged 
word and the solemn treaties with other 
nations. 

But at last we know that Frederick the 
Great, the ancestor of the Kaiser, was the 
author of the phrase, " the treaty is a scrap 
of paper." What was once in the gristle in 
the ancestor is now bred in the bone of the 
Kaiser and Crown Prince. That phrase, " a 
scrap of paper," holds the germ of a thousand 
wars. It spells the ruin of civilization. IS'ot 
to resent it by war, is for the Allies to com- 
mit spiritual suicide. 



25 



The Arch-Criminal 

5. The Plot of the Kaiser 
All the pamphlets issued secretly to the 
members of the Pan-German League in- 
variably used Kome as their illustration. 
We are not surprised, therefore, to find that 
the German leaders called attention to 
the fact that it took two wars at inter- 
vals of some years to make Kome a world 
empire. 

In like manner, therefore, the Kaiser and 
his Cabinet told the German people at home 
and abroad that the first war, beginning in 

1914, would establish a Middle-Europe Em- 
pire extending from Hamburg on the North 
Sea to Bagdad on the Persian Gulf. 

One of the pamphlets issued many years 
ago fixed the countries to be conquered about 

1915, and distinctly mentioned Denmark, 
Holland, Belgium and North France, Poland 
and Kumania, Hungary and Austria, Serbia 
and Bulgaria, and the wheat granaries of 
Kussia, with Turkey and Armenia. 

The number of people to be conquered and 
included after the first war was fixed at 
250,000,000. 

The argument states that it will take but 
a few years to compact this Middle-Europe 
26 



The Plot of the Kaiser 

Empire and that naturally Great Britain, 
Spain and Italy, to the west, with Norway 
and Sweden to the north, with Italy and 
Switzerland to the south, and of course 
Greece and Egypt would, from time to time, 
as crises came, fall inevitably into Germany's 
hand. Berlin, as the world capital, should 
by 1920 be the magnet, and the little parti- 
cles of iron, named the Balkan States, would 
be drawn and held by this great German 
magnet in Berlin. 

The first step to be taken and the first 
goal to be reached concerned, of course, the 
English Channel, the Dutch cities on the 
mouth of the Khine, and the iron mines of 
Northern France. We know to an absolute 
certainty all the details of this plan. 

For more than thirty years Germany had 
been organizing her army ; she knew every 
road, inn, bridge, factory, shop, and whole- 
sale store in Denmark and Holland, Belgium 
and France. In all of the larger ones she 
had German agents belonging to the Pan- 
German League toiling as workmen and 
every detail was planned out in advance. 

In 1910 General von Bissing, one of the 
Kaiser's closest friends, was sent to Brussels. 
For years he spent the summer months ap- 
27 



The Arch-Criminal 

parently at the watering places near The 
Hague in Holland and Ostend in Belgium, 
preparatory to the hour when Germany 
would seize Belgium and he assume his posi- 
tion as Governor-General, living in Brussels. 

Men nearing death tell the truth. In Jan- 
uary of 1917 von Bissing prepared a memo- 
randum for the direction of Belgian affairs 
in His Majesty's name and according to his 
wish. This document contains the medita- 
tions of a dying man. The statements he 
makes, he says, contain the views that in- 
spired his every act in Belgium during his 
administration. 

In his last will and testament von Bissing, 
in the spring of 1917, advises the German 
Government in Berlin that the time has come 
to throw off all disguises. He says that at 
the beginning of the war it was probably 
good policy to deny that the Government 
ever intended to annex Belgium, but, he says, 
"now that we are victorious there is no 
reason why we should not publish to the 
world the fact that we never intend to give 
up one foot of the Belgian sea-coast, nor one 
ton of the Belgian coal, nor one acre of the 
French iron mines." 

He says plainly: "The annual Belgian 
28 



The Plot of the Kaiser 

production of 23,000,000 tons of coal has 
given us a monopoly on the continent which 
has helped to maintain our vitality. If we 
do not hold Belgium, administer Belgium in 
future for our interest and protect Belgium 
by force of arms, our trade and industry will 
lose the positions they have won in Belgium 
and perhaps will never recover them." 

And what about Dutch cities and sea- 
ports ? On page eighteen of General von 
Bissing's last will and testament he adds : 

" Our frontier, in the interest of our sea 
power, must be pushed forward to the sea." 
This sentence makes it perfectly plain that a 
little later Germany intends to incorporate 
Kotterdam in her own customs union. 
*' Belgium must be seized and held, as it now 
is, and as it is to-day it must be in the future. 
The conquest of Belgium has simply been 
forced upon us by the necessities of German 
expansion." 

Yon Bissing, however, recognizes the diffi- 
culty of annexing Belgium and securing the 
consent of the members who shall arrange 
the treaty of peace at the conclusion of the 
war, and this is his decision : 

" Our best method, therefore, is to avoid, 
during the peace negotiations, all discussion 
29 



The Arch-Criminal 

about the form of the annexation and to ap- 
ply nothing but the right of conquest. 
Plainly Belgium's King can never consent to 
abandon his sovereignty, but we can read in 
Machiavelli that he who desires to take pos- 
session of a country will be compelled to re- 
move the King or regent, even by killing 
him." 

Yon Bissing has torn off all masks. He 
himself states that he is speaking for the 
Kaiser, as his most trusted friend and coun- 
sellor. Germany intends, therefore, ulti- 
mately to kill King Albert of Belgium, and 
this carries with it that the Kaiser and his 
War Staff believe they have the right to kill 
any King or President who happens to stand 
in the pathway of their ambition. Every 
lover of mankind whose heart is knitted in 
with the poor and the weak will understand 
what that editor meant the other day when 
he said : 

" The one duty of the hour, therefore, for 
America, is to kill Germans, that we may 
keep the rest of the world from being 
killed." 



30 



THE JUDAS 
AMONG NATIONS 



II 



1. The Original Plot of the Members 
of the Potsdam Gang 

MANY historic meetings, big with social 
disaster, are recorded in history. Wit- 
ness the meeting of the Athenian judges for 
the killing of Socrates. Witness the coming 
together of the priests and Judas for the 
piteous tragedy of the death of Jesus. Wit- 
ness that midnight meeting of the conspira- 
tors in Florence for the burning of Sa- 
vonarola. Terrible also the results of that 
meeting in the Potsdam Palace in 1896 that 
culminated in the Pan-German Empire 
scheme. 

What began as a spark that day has ended 
in a world conflagration. 

In retrospect the Kaiser and his associates 
had many events behind them to encourage 
the ambition to make Berlin a world capital, 
Kaiser Wilhelm the world emperor and all 
the other nations and races subject peoples. 
31 



The Judas Among Nations 

Beginning in 1860 with thirty-five millions 
of people and only fifteen billions of dollars, 
Germany had climbed to greatness upon iron 
steps, heated hot by war. Never did wars 
yield so large a return. 

The war with Denmark had given Ger- 
many the Kiel Harbour, the Kiel Canal and 
a sea-coast for her ships. 

The war with Austria had given Germany 
the rich coal provinces of Central Europe. 
The war with France had given Germany 
the iron mines of Alsace and Lorraine. 

And here for the next war were Denmark 
and Holland, Belgium and northern France 
— so many jewel boxes that could be looted. 
To the eastward were Poland with her coal 
mines, Kumania with her oil fields and Kussia 
with her wheat granaries. And once Central 
Europe became a Middle-Europe German 
Empire there was no reason why later on 
Germany should not extend her conquests to 
Kussia on the east and England on the west, 
and then to North and South America. 

It was a great scheme. Never was prize 
so rich. Never could obstacles be so easily 
swept away. To make Berlin a world- 
capital and Kaiser Wilhelm a world-emperor 
only two things were needed. 
32 



The Original Plot of the Potsdam Gang 

Plainly the first thing to be done was to 
organize the Pan-German Empire League 
and educate the leading men of Germany 
— the ship owners, bankers, merchants and 
manufacturers, editors, ministers, priests and 
university professors. 

Local branch societies were organized in 
all the large German towns and cities. 
Weekly meetings were held, papers read and 
reports made. Slowly people of the middle 
class were included in the league. Docu- 
ments marked " Secret and Confidential " 
were distributed, setting forth the details of 
the scheme. 

Full reports were made as to what Ger- 
many could make by seizing the fields of 
Denmark, the cities on the mouth of the 
Khine in Belgium, the coal and iron mines 
of France, Poland and Russia, and also the 
undeveloped resources of the Yalley of the 
Euphrates. 

Careful statements were prepared as to 
the difficulties that must be surmounted, but 
always this lure was held out — that the 
poorest German who then had nothing, 
would when Germany was victorious become 
a landowner, live in a mansion and drive 
his own automobile. Then he would have 
33 



The Judas Among Nations 

Russians and Frenchmen to wait upon him, 
since the German was a superman, intended 
for a patrician, while all other races w^ere 
pigs, intended by nature to be bondsmen and 
plebeians. 

" The rest of the world is amassing w^ealth, 
and when the fruit is ripe then we Germans 
will pluck it " — this was their motto. 

Little by little the germ of world-ambition 
became a fever, burning in the soul of every 
German at home or abroad. It took twenty 
years to thoroughly inculcate every indi- 
vidual of the German race with this feverish 
ambition, but when 1914 came every Ger- 
man had gone over to the Pan-Germaa 
scheme and was ready to die for it. 



2. The Berlin Schemers and Their Plot 

After all the Germans at home and abroad 
understood the Pan-German scheme of sedi- 
tious intrigue in foreign countries and the 
vast web was spun and thrown out over all 
the cities and continents where the Kaiser's 
representatives were living, the second thing 
to be done was to make the plan clear by 
spreading it out like a great map. The 
method used, therefore, was pictorial. 
34 



The Berlin Schemers and Their Plot 

The Department of Publicity in Berlin 
became experts on geography. They began 
to issue illustrated maps so that the rudest 
German peasants and the German colonists 
living in Milwaukee or El Paso, in Kio Jane- 
iro or Buenos Aires, in Brussels or St. Peters- 
burg, in Melbourne or Calcutta, could easily 
understand the method and the goal. 

Out of twenty maps issued in Berlin and 
reproduced by Andre Cheredame, no one is 
more important than the one marked " The 
Old Koman Empire." The simplest German 
miner understood the map at a glance 
and realized its meaning for the members 
of the Pan-German League. Here is old 
Kome marked world capital. Here is Caesar 
Augustus called the first world emperor. 
Here is Carthage with its capital looted and 
Roman peasants remaining after the victory 
to move into rich men's houses and estates 
of North Africa. And here also were the 
maps of conquered Palestine, Ephesus, Athens 
and Corinth. To be sure the old Romans 
had to become soldiers, but, later, did not 
each Roman soldier live in the rich gardens 
around Thebes, Ephesus and Corinth ? 

Instantly the imaginations of the German 
peasants and workmen kindled. The Kaiser 
35 



The Judas Among Nations 

was right. What had been in Kome must 
be in Berlin. The Elbe must succeed the 
Tiber. Berlin shall be the second world- 
capital. Our Wilhelm shall be the second 
world-emperor. Germania shall be written 
straight across Europe from Hamburg on 
the North Sea to Bagdad on the Persian 
Gulf. Germans alone shall be allowed to 
carry weapons, as once only the Koman was 
allowed to own a spear ; only Germans shall 
be allowed to hold title deeds to lands, even 
as once only Komans could hold a field or 
a house in fee simple. Old Kome won by 
becoming a military State. 

Did not the people of Kome go forth as 
soldiers and return with triumphal proces- 
sions, with treasures of loot that took days 
to pass along the Appian Way, while the 
Komans stood cheering and the women and 
children sang and threw flowers in the path ? 
Why should not the German army, between 
the reaping of the wheat in July and the 
threshing of the wheat in October, return 
from Brussels and Paris laden with treasure, 
while a second triumphal procession marched 
down Wilhelmstrasse ? 

The German peasants kindled at this 
dream. Why should the German have to 
36 



The Berlin Schemers and Their Plot 

live always on bologna sausage, drink beer, 
eat sauerkraut and live in ugly houses when 
the people of Paris and London drank cham- 
pagne, ate roast fowl, wore French laces and 
the jBlnest English wools ? It was a wicked 
shame. Surely the German was intended 
for something better than sauerkraut and 
beer! 

"Two weeks and we will be in Brussels. 
Three weeks and we will have Paris. Two 
months and we will loot London." 

This was the plan. How significant that 
letter, taken from the dead body of a Ger- 
man boy found in No Man's Land, near 
Compiegne. 

"Within three days, Liebschen, we will 
be in Paris. I intend to bring you a pocket- 
ful of Paris rings and jewels, with Paris 
gowms and laces." 

From the body of a German boy found 
near Luneville was taken this letter saying 
that, with his three companions, he had 
picked out four French farms and left the 
houses standing, and that his friends and 
himself had picked out these farms as per- 
manent homes. Later he added that Hein- 
rich thought it would be much better for 
them to wait until they smashed England 

n 



The Judas Among Nations 

and made Canada a German colony. Then 
they could own, not small French farms, but 
vast Canadian farms with a hundred tenants 
working for him in the valleys around To- 
ronto and the vineyards of Winnipeg and 
orchards of Hudson Bay. 

Most shrewd and cunning, the plotters of 
the Potsdam gang. They knew how to feed 
the fires of envy and avarice in the German 
people. Every few weeks they placed new 
material in the hands of every German at 
home and abroad. They reminded each poor 
peasant and foreign colonist that he was a 
superman, and that by day and by night he 
was to prepare for the time when he would 
become the head of all the people of the 
town or industry with which he was related. 
Poor Germans in foreign countries dreamed 
their dreams of the time when they would 
be appointed by the Kaiser and Foreign Min- 
ister to take charge of the village in Mexico, 
the mine in Chile, or when they would be the 
tax collector in some distant province. 

We know now, from letters that have 
been found, that the German soldiers in 
France carried in their pockets a description 
by the German historian Curtius of the tri- 
umphal procession along the Appian Way, 
38 



The Berlin Schemers and Their Plot 

when the Eoman conquerors came home 
loaded with loot. These skillful German 
plotters printed at the bottom of Curtius's 
description the statement that each German 
soldier must look forward to a similar return 
from London, Paris and Brussels to march 
through the streets of Munich and Berlin. 

What a dream was this German dream! 
What treasures were to be brought into 
Berlin ! What marbles and bronzes of Kodin 
stolen from Paris! At last Berlin was to 
own beautiful paintings, for the treasures of 
the Louvre were to be the Kaiser's. 

Never was there such a dream dreamed 
by peasants who soon were to become princes 
and kings and patricians. The German had 
exchanged the rye bread of 1913 for the 
"fog bank" of 1918 ; had given up German 
beer to grasp only empty, breaking bubbles. 
But it was a great dream while it lasted. In 
pursuance of his hope he sacrificed three 
million German boys, left dead in the fields 
of Flanders and France. He sent home four 
million German cripples. He filled the land 
with vast armies of widows and orphans. 

It could not have been otherwise. There 
has never been, and never will be, but one 
world city — Kome ; and there has never been 
39 



The J-udas Among Nations 

but one world-emperor — Caesar Augustus. 
There is to be one universal kingdom — and 
that is the kingdom of God, the kingdom of 
love, justice, peace and good- will. The Ger- 
man has been pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp. 

A world-kingdom will come, but no Kaiser 
will rule over that empire of love. In that 
world-parliament all the races shall be repre- 
sented as equals; then the earth that has 
long been a battle-field shall become an Eden 
garden, where all are patriots towards the 
world-kingdom, and scholars towards the in- 
tellect, and self-sufficing towards the family, 
and obedient towards their God. 



3. German Superiority a Myth That 
Has Exploded 

Several years before the great war began 
a Dutch humorist wrote a play on Ger- 
man megalomania. He portrayed a German 
schoolroom in Prussia. Thirty or forty 
embryonic Prussians are at the desks and a 
Prussian schoolmaster is in the chair. 

" Children, what is the greatest country in 
the world ? " 

All shouted vociferously, " Germany ! " 

" What is the greatest city in the world ? " 
40 



German Superiority a Myth 

" Berlin ! " 

" Who is the greatest man in the world ? " 

" The Kaiser I " 

" Should there ever be, children, a vacancy 
in the Trinity, who is best fitted to fill the 
position ? " 

"The Crown Prince!" 

" Who are the chosen people of the good 
old German God ? " 

" The German people ! " 

]N"ever was there a finer bit of sarcasm 
and yet the Germans were never able to un- 
derstand the play. The Kaiser, the War 
Staff, the Cabinet, down to the last wretched 
creature working in the stables and the 
sewers, reading the play, exclaimed : 

" What is the man driving at ? Why, of 
course the Germans are the greatest people 
in the world — we admit it ! " 

Now, during the last few years the Ger- 
mans have spent untold millions in propagat- 
ing this myth of superiority, and yet the Ger- 
man intellect has never even had a second- 
rate position. Call the roll of all the tools 
that have redeemed men from drudgery and 
you will find that Germany's contributions 
are hopelessly inferior to the other nations. 

The new industrial era began with the 
41 



The Judas Among Nations 

locomotive and steamship ; James Watt in- 
vented the one and Stevenson the other. 

The new era of physical comfort began 
with the loom ; a Frenchman named Jac- 
quard and an Englishman named Arkwright 
made men warm for their work in winter. 
Garments within the reach of the poor man 
in forest and factory, field and mine, means 
the cotton gin, and that gin is the gift of 
an American. The sewing machine changed 
woman's position, but the world owes that to 
our own Elias Howe. 

We owe the telegraph to an English in- 
ventor and, in part, to Morse. We owe the 
cable in part to Lord Kelvin and, in part, to 
Cyrus Field. We owe the telephone to Bell 
and the wireless to Marconi. 

Holland invented the submarine, Wright 
the airplane, McCormick the reaper and 
Edison the phonograph. 

An American invented the German sub- 
marine ; an American invented the German 
torpedo ; an American invented the German 
machine-gun ; an American invented the 
Murphy button, the yellow fever antitoxin, 
the Dakin solution. 

An English physician discovered the cir- 
culation of the blood, Jenner gave us vacci- 
42 



German Superiority a Myth 

nation, Lister antiseptics, France the Pasteur 
serums and the Curie radio discoveries, while 
a Bulgarian, Dr. Metchnikoff, discovered the 
enemies of the blood. 

It was from France, England and the 
United States that Germany stole the type- 
writer, the steel building, the use of rubber, 
the aniline dyes, reenforced concrete bridges, 
air-brakes, the use of electricity. 

One of the most amazing volumes in the 
world is the " History of Tools and Machin- 
ery." We have all known for a long time 
that there is not one single German name 
among the eight great masters of painting 
that begins with Eembrandt and includes 
men like Yelasquez and Giotto. We have 
long known that there is no German sculptor 
of the first class nor a German sculptor that 
is within ten thousand leagues of Eodin, 
Michael Angelo or Phidias. We have long 
known that Schubert and Schumann and 
Kubinstein and Haydn and Chopin were all 
Jews, and that three-fourths of the other so- 
called German musicians were Jews whose 
ancestors suffered such frightful political 
disabilities in Germany and were so regu- 
larly looted of all their property that they 
gave up their Hebrew names and took Ger- 
43 



The Judas Among Nations 

man, just as now thousands upon thousands 
of Germans in this country, ashamed of their 
names, are Americanizing their family title. 

The simple fact is that if a Jew will only 
write the creative music, like that of Bee- 
thoven, a German whose gift is detail will 
conduct the orchestra. 

The German can standardize a machine, 
providing an Englishman, a Frenchman or 
an American will first invent it. The Ger- 
man will gather up the remnants and scraps 
and odds and ends in a clothing factory — 
but, oh, think of an American gentleman 
having to wear the coat that was cut by a 
tailor in Berlin or Munich ! Having during 
ten different summers looked at their gar- 
ments, all one can say is that the German 
men and women are covered up but not 
clothed. 

For thirty years the Germans have paid 
their representatives to stand on the corner 
of the street and bawl out to every passer- 
by : " Great is the Kaiser ! Great are we 
Germans ! Let all people with cymbals, 
sackbut, shawns and psaltery cry aloud, say- 
ing ^ Great is the Kaiser and all his people ! ' " 

And now suddenly the myth has burst like 
a bubble. The delusion is exploded. The 
44 



German Intrigues 

Kaiser has found out that it is dangerous to 
blow too much hot air into a German blad- 
der. 

Measured around the stomach in the Hof- 
braus in the presence of a barrel of beer, the 
Prussian and the Bavarian are great ; but 
the hat band requires the least material of 
any made in four countries. 

For the time has come to confess this sim- 
ple fact that for any one great tool, or art, 
or contribution to science created by a Ger- 
man there are four invented by either an 
American, an Englishman or a Frenchman. 



4. German Intrigues 

The spider's web stretched out over a 
flower bed with a great fat spider at the 
centre and the threads along which the 
spider runs to thrust its poisoned sting into 
the enmeshed butterfly is nature's most 
accurate symbol of the vast web of espionage 
lying over IS'orth and South America with 
secret threads that vibrated to the touch of 
the spider at the centre named Berlin. 

In that web thousands of German- Ameri- 
cans were enmeshed. The records of our 
Secret Service concerning these German 
45 



The Judas Among Nations 

enemies of the American Government read 
like a book of assassinations or like a history 
of the black arts. When the whole story 
comes to be told it will horrify the world. 

The quality of the German- Americans that 
Berlin bribed is set forth in the reminiscences 
of "Witte when he says that the Kaiser and 
the Foreign Department paid Munsterberg 
of Harvard University ;$5,000 a year salary 
and that Munsterberg was the most success- 
ful and efficient spy that the German system 
had ever developed. 

In the long list of German agents are to 
be found the names of German-American 
bankers who received secret decorations and 
medals from the German Government ; of 
German merchants who were partners in this 
country of firms in the Fatherland and were 
bribed by a ribbon and an invitation to the 
Potsdam Palace ; of German newspaper men 
who were under German pay, and, most 
amazing of all, among the papers seized in 
the office of a German Consul was found a 
commission appointing this Consul in an 
American city to the office of Governor- 
General of one of the greatest States of 
Canada as soon as Canada became a German 
colony. 

46 



German Intrigues 

Many of the threads from Berlin ran into 
the various cities of Mexico. A German 
head office was set up under the general 
direction of Zimmermann in Berlin and of 
von Bernstorff in Washington. Certain 
large institutions that did business in Mexico, 
working in the same field, were quietly 
elbowed out of Mexico, and an American 
company, ostensibly American, but con- 
trolled by Germans, took over the business 
of the other firms under special arrangement 
with Mexico. Pledges were given Mexico 
that as soon as Germany had reduced Canada 
and the United States to the position of 
German colonies, Texas, 'New Mexico, Ari- 
zona, Nevada and California should be 
handed back to the Mexicans. 

Millions were spent by the German Foreign 
Office as ordinary men spend dollars. The 
German spies, like Boy-Ed and von Papen, 
arranged to blow up American munition 
factories and held dinners waiting for a 
telephone message saying that the magazine 
had just exploded or the depot had taken 
fire or a scow had been sunk, after which 
they drank the health of the man who 
lighted the match. 

German agents burned up wheat elevators 
47 



The Judas Among Nations 

with hundreds of millions of dollars' worth 
of wheat; they fired warehouses, blew up 
bridges, wrecked munition plants, destroyed 
shiploads of food, dynamited the House of 
Parliament in Ottawa, sank the Lusitania 
near Ireland, spread glanders among the 
horses in Sweden, poisoned the food in 
Kumania, sank the ships of Norway, plotted 
against the Argentine Eepublic. Their 
spies, dynamiters, secret agents, were in 
every capital and country because it was 
their purpose to make Berlin a world capital, 
Kaiser Wilhelm the world emperor and to 
Germanize the people of the whole earth. 

The web had as its centre the Potsdam 
Palace, but its black lines ran out into all 
the earth. 



5. German Burglars Loaded With Loot 
Are the More Easily Captured 

It seems that Germany has published, for 
the Spaniards, a list of treasures she has won. 
In the long calendar the reader finds that 
eight States— Belgium, France, Poland, Ku- 
mania, Russia, Serbia, Armenia, Italy — have 
all been looted. 

The Germans claim they have spoiled over 

48 



German Burglars Loaded With Loot 

three hundred first class cities, several thou- 
sand secondary cities and towns ; they add 
that they have destroyed seventy-three 
cathedrals and looted them of their priceless 
treasures of statues, paintings, stained glass, 
vessels of silver and gold. 

With brazen audacity the German pam- 
phlet tells the Spaniards that they have seized 
so many hundred thousand watches, so many 
hundred thousand rings, so much treasure of 
diamonds and jewels, so many paintings 
from rich men's houses, and the long boast 
ends with the statement that they " obtained 
nearly five billions of loot out of western 
Russia and have assessed two billions more 
upon the farmers, villages and cities of 
Ukraine." 

But the boast is an idle and empty boast. 
It is true that no army of the Allies has 
crossed the German frontier to permanently 
hold a city. But let no man think that Ger- 
many has succeeded because of the richness 
of her loot. There is a success that is failure. 
There is a victory that is defeat. 

Macbeth killed Duncan and went to live 

in the palace of the dead king, but did 

Macbeth succeed? Was not his palace a 

brief halting place in his journey towards 

49 



The Judas Among Nations 

remorse, insanity and the day when Duncan's 
friends in turn slew Macbeth ? 

The rich judges of Athens succeeded and 
Socrates failed. They went home to drink 
wine and feast, while Socrates went to the 
jail to drink a cup of poison. But who 
succeeded? The judges whose names are 
written low down and bespattered with 
dirt — or Socrates, whose name fills the sky 
and who has become the thinker for the 
world ? 

What if the Kaiser does boast of his 
successes to-day? So boasted Nero — send- 
ing Paul to his rags, crusts and the dungeon 
preparatory to the headman's axe. But it is 
Nero that lost out, and it is Paul who reigns 
a crowned king. 

The chief priests celebrated their victory ; 
at the close of the day, after they had suc- 
ceeded in crucifying Jesus ; but after nine- 
teen centuries the murderers are unknown 
and almost forgotten, while that young car- 
penter rules over His Empire of Love. 

To-day the Kaiser claims to have won the 
victory of "a superman." In that he has 
carried murder, arson, lying, rapine, lust up 
to the nth power, let us concede his claim. 
Not otherwise two hundred years ago the 
50 



German Burglars Loaded With Loot 

Indian, with his scalping knife, his war-whoop 
and his tomahawk, was " a superman " in 
terms of savagery. Not otherwise the 
Spaniards under Bloody Alva were " super- 
men " in terms of rack, thumbscrew and in- 
struments of torture. 

But what savages once did in the little, 
the Kaiser and his men now do in the large. 
But because the Kaiser can publish a long 
list of wealth gained — by breaking his 
treaties, by murder, arson and lust — let no 
man think that he is successful. 

The two Biddle brothers looted the Bank 
of England, but they became outcasts upon 
the face of the earth, and always the 
dungeon yawned for them, just as the 
Kaiser and von Hindenburg never sleep at 
night without a vision of an oak tree, a long 
bough and a hemp rope dangling at the end, 
for the hemp is now twisted that will one 
day choke to death the murderous Kaiser 
and his War Staff. 

Let no patriot, whether he lives in Spain, 
Kussia or the United States, forget that ours 
is a world ruled by men who were defeated. 

To-day on the thrones of the world are 
the heroes, like Paul and Demosthenes ; the 
martyrs who were burned with Savonarola 
51 



The Judas Among Nations 

in Florence or poisoned with Socrates in 
Athens. 

To-day, the soldiers of Marathon and 
Marston Moor, Gettysburg and the Marne 
now rule the world. 

The treasure of the burglar and the brigand 
dissolves like snowflakes iu a river. 

Long ago the Hebrew poet said : " I have 
seen the wicked flourish like a green bay 
tree, and then I lifted up my eyes, and, be- 
hold ! he was not." And when a little time 
has passed all lovers of liberty and humanity 
will exclaim; "During four years I have 
seen the Kaiser and von Hindenburg flourish 
as the green bay tree, and I lifted up mine 
eyes, and, behold ! they were not. For the 
breath of His nostrils had slain them." 



6. Germans Who Hide Behind the 
Screen 

Two thousand years are a long time in 
terms of history. 

Many damnable tools have been invented 
during these twenty centuries. The rack, 
the thumbscrew, the tomahawk, the fagot 
belong among these devilish instruments. 

Cruelties so terrible have been devised 
52 



Germans Who Hide Behind the Screen 

that old scholars often felt unwilling to be- 
lieve that men were so low in the scale as to 
have been the authors of these methods of 
fiendishness. 

In the hope, therefore, of keeping respect 
for man many scholars transferred all re- 
sponsibility unto devils. They called in 
Satan and made him to be the father of hate 
and cruelty. They could not believe that 
ISTero, Judas or Torqueraada could conceive 
such wickedness. They therefore made the 
devil with his cloven feet and his long tail to 
whisper these cunning suggestions in the ear 
of the traitor. Thus the responsibility for 
unwonted cruelty was divided between the 
murderer and the devil who counselled the 
black crime. 

Perhaps the most damnable thing that was 
ever suggested by the devil in two thousand 
years is this little object called the German 
soldier's token. Never did an object so small 
send forth cruelties so large and manifold. 

The little disc is stamped out on thick 
paper for German privates and upon alumi- 
num for the officers. At the top of this 
cardboard is the portrait of that awful being 
called by the Kaiser " our good old German 
God." 

53 



The Judas Among Nations 

Look at his white hair, the long beard and 
the great sword in the right hand, with the 
suggestion that since God uses the sword the 
German soldier must cut men to pieces also. 

Beneath you see flames gushing up, sug- 
gesting to the German soldier that he is 
quite right in burning the houses of France 
and Belgium after he has looted them, and 
for flinging the dead bodies into the blazing 
rafters. Now read the words written be- 
neath the face of the being the Germans call 
God. 

"Strike them all dead. The Day of 
Judgment shall ask you no questions." 

Strike dead old men and women ! Dash 
the children's brains out against the stone 
wall ! Violate young girls ! Mutilate their 
fair bodies so that they will be unseemly 
when they are found by the husband or 
father. Burn, steal, kill — but remember 
that your Kaiser and the War Staff have 
promised to stand between you and God 
Almighty and the Day of Judgment ! Even 
if Jesus did say, " Woe unto them that 
offend against my little ones," you must re- 
member that your Kaiser and officers have 
promised you immunity on the Day of Judg- 
ment. 

54 



Germans Who Hide Behind the Screen 

That is what is meant by the sentence on 
page thirty -one in the German handbook of 
" War on Land " : " That which is permis- 
sible to the German soldier is anything what- 
soever that will help him gain his goal 
quickly." 

Nothing better illustrates the total col- 
lapse of manhood in the Germans than this 
soldier's token. 

A coward by nature, the German is afraid 
to kill and steal, and so he invented a screen 
behind which he could hide and named it 
" the soldier's token." 

Going into a French village the Germans 
collect the women and children, order them 
to march in advance, shoot a few to terrorize 
the rest, and then, hiding behind this living 
screen, the Germans march forward. In 
this way they protect themselves. 

The whole history of the human race con- 
tains no chapter of atrocity like the atrocity 
of the Germans. The history of the world 
contains no story of cowardice so black and 
damnable as the cowardice of the Germans. 
Out of cowardice the soldier's token was 
born. 

And so the Kaiser and the War Staff in- 
vented this round piece of cardboard, with 
55 



The Judas Among Nations 

the representation of God as going forth 
with His sword to kill men and with His 
flames to burn them and with the motto : 
" Strike them all dead, for the Day of 
Judgment will ask you no questions.'* 

Therefore among the instruments of 
cruelty, called the rack, the fagot, the 
thumbscrew and the tomahawk, let us give 
the first place to the German soldier's token, 
the most damnable weapon that has come 
out of hell during the last two thousand 
years. 



7. Must German Men Be Exterminated *? 

A singular revulsion of sentiment as to 
what must be done with the German army 
after the war, is now sweeping over the civi- 
lized world. Men who once were pacifists, 
men of chivalry and kindness, men whose 
life has been devoted to philanthropy and 
reform, scholars and statesmen, whose very 
atmosphere is compassion and magnanimity 
towards the poor and weak, are now utter- 
ing sentiments that four years ago would 
have been astounding beyond compare. 
These men feel that there is no longer 
any room in the world for the German. 
56 



Must German Men Be Exterminated ? 

Society has organized itself against the 
rattlesnake and the yellow fever. Shep- 
herds have entered into a conspiracy to ex- 
terminate the wolves. The Boards of Health 
are planning to wipe out typhoid, cholera 
and the Black Plague. 'Not otherwise, lovers 
of their fellow man have finally become 
perfectly hopeless with reference to the 
German people. They have no more rela- 
tions to the civilization of 1918 than an 
orang-outang, a gorilla, a Judas, a hyena, a 
thumbscrew, a scalping knife in the hands 
of a savage. These brutes must be cast out 
of society. 

Some of us, hoping against hope, after the 
reluctant confession of the truth of the Ger- 
man atrocities, have appealed to education. 
We knew that Tacitus said, nearly two thou- 
sand years ago, that " the German treats 
women with cruelty, tortures his enemies, 
and associates kindness with weakness." But 
nineteen centuries of education have not 
changed the German one whit. The mere 
catalogue of the crimes committed by Ger- 
man officers and soldiers and set forth in 
more than twenty volumes of proofs des- 
troys the last vestige of hope for their future. 
Think of the catalogue ! Babies nailed like 
57 



The Judas Among Nations 

rats to the doors of houses ! Children skew- 
ered on a bayonet midst the cheers of march- 
ing Germans — as if the child were a quail, 
skewered on a fork ! Matrons, old men and 
priests slaughtered; young Italian officers 
with throats cut and hanging on hooks in 
butchers' shops ; the bombing of Eed Cross 
hospitals and nurses and the white flag; 
everything achieved by civilized man defiled 
and destroyed — reverence for childhood and 
age, the sanctity of womanhood, the stand- 
ards of honour, fidelity to treaties and all 
destroyed, not in a mood of drunkenness or 
a fit of rage, but on a deliberate, cold, calcu- 
lated policy of German f rightfulness. 

The sense of hopelessness as to civilizing 
the German and keeping him as an element 
in the new society grew out of the breakdown 
of education and science in changing the 
German of the time of Tacitus. Plainly the 
time has come to make full confession of the 
fact that education can change the size but 
not the sort. The German in the time of 
Tacitus was ignorant when he took the chil- 
dren of his enemy and dashed their brains 
out against the wall ; the German of 1914 
and 1918 still butchers children, the only 
difference being that the butchery is now 
58 



Must German Men Be Exterminated ? 

more efficient and better calculated, through 
scientific cruelty, to stir horror and spread 
frightf ulness. The leopard has not changed 
its spots. The rattlesnake is larger and has 
more poison in the sac; the German wolf 
has increased in size, and where once he tore 
the throat of two sheep, now he can rend 
ten lambs in half the time. In utter de- 
spair, therefore, statesmen, generals, diplo- 
mats, editors are now talking about the duty 
of simply exterminating the German people. 
There will shortly be held a meeting of sur- 
geons in this country. A copy of the pre- 
liminary call lies before me. The plan to be 
discussed is based upon the Indiana State 
law. That law authorizes a State Board of 
Surgeons to use upon the person of confirmed 
criminals and hopeless idiots the new painless 
method of sterilizing the men. These sur- 
geons are preparing to advocate the calling 
of a world conference to consider the steril- 
ization of the ten million German soldiers, 
and the segregation of their women, that 
when this generation of German goes, civi- 
lized cities, states and races may be rid of 
this awful cancer that must be cut clean out 
of the body of society. 



59 



THE BLACK 

SOUL OF THE HUN 



in 



1. German Barbarism Not Barbarism to 
the German 

STRICTLY speaking, the only man who 
thoroughly understands the cruelty of 
the Germans is the German himself. JSTo 
American or Englishman, no Belgian or 
Frenchman has the gift of telepathy that 
enables him to know what is going on in 
the German mind that guides the German's 
hand in committing his horrible atrocities. 
Now and then, in a moment when he is off 
guard, an occasional German reveals the ex- 
planation, and we look in, just as John 
Bunyan's pilgrim saw the door into Hades 
opened by a little crack, through which he 
looked upon the flames. Not otherwise was 
it with that German in Baltimore, who 
recently exposed the German mind, and 
from the German view-point explained the 
Germans in their hour of brutality. 
60 



German Barbarism 

During a most intimate and personal con- 
versation with a banker, this German, the 
other day, explained his people's atrocities 
by saying that what is barbarism and 
atrocities to England, France or the United 
States is not barbarism at all to the Ger- 
mans. In proof of this astounding statement 
the German gave this personal incident of 
his boyhood. He said that in his gymnasium 
there was another boy who had something 
that he wanted. When the opportunity 
came, being the stronger, he jumped upon 
the other boy, beat him up terribly and 
made him a cripple for life. On reaching 
his home he showed his parents what he had 
stolen, and he was patted on the back, 
praised for his might with his fists, and told 
that that was the method he was to follow 
in after life. 

He insisted that this sort of thing was 
drilled into every German boy, and for that 
reason it never once even occurred to him 
that he had done wrong. " After I became 
a man I settled in America, and as I came to 
understand the spirit of American civilization 
it grew upon me that I had committed a 
crime, and now for twenty -two years, as 
some atonement for my sin, I have been 
6i 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

supporting that crippled man and his 
widowed mother.'' 

The modern banker has become a sort of 
confessor, and to the banker many sins are 
revealed as once to the priest. Nothing is 
more significant than this German confession 
and his philosophy of the German atrocity. 
In his own written letter concerning that 
crime of his boyhood this German adds: 
" Had I remained in Germany no one would 
ever have thought of suggesting to me that 
I had done wrong, and it would never have 
entered into my head that I was under any 
obligation to the man I had maimed. In 
the light of American civilization I under- 
stand the difference, and I am seeking to 
atone for my sin, but all Germans have been 
taught, as I was taught. The Germans, 
therefore, in their campaign of frightfulness, 
are committing deeds which from the view- 
point of American civilization are barbarous, 
but from the view-point of Germans are not 
crimes at all." 

The significance of this frank confession of 
a German, his story of how America had re- 
deemed his soul out of the spirit of force and 
cruelty into the spirit of kindness, humanity 
and justice, reveals more of the real nature 
62 



German Barbarism 

of the German beast and the Potsdam gang 
than a thousand volumes on the philosophy 
of German atrocities. The simple fact is 
that the crimes of the Germans are abomi- 
nable atrocities to us, but that intellectually 
and morally the German officer and soldier 
simply do not know what we mean by our 
horror and the wave of moral indignation 
that has swept over the earth. Jesse Pom- 
eroy used to pull canary birds apart, and 
tortured children to death. But the boy 
was deficient in the nerve of humanity. He 
simply stared with blank eyes when the 
judge and the jury condemned him. He 
was incapable of knowing what the excite- 
ment over the dead body was about. On 
the side of compassion and humanity the 
German is, as it were, colour blind, is with- 
out musical sense, and the nerves of kindness 
and humanity are atrophied. The ordinary 
German prisoner when shown the bodies left 
behind after the flight of the German army 
simply looks blankly at the mutilated corpse 
and exclaims : " Well, what of it ? Why 
not ? Why shouldn't we ? " and shrugs his 
shoulders, taking it as a matter of course. 
That is another reason why a great number 
of American business men, bankers, mer- 
63 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

chants, manufacturers, scholars, statesmen, 
have reluctantly been forced to the convic- 
tion that the ten millions of German soldiers 
should be painlessly sterilized, that the Ger- 
man people (saving only the remnant who 
accept Jesus' idea of compassion and kind- 
ness towards God's poor and weak) should be 
allowed to die out of the world. Ke-read, 
therefore, what this German has said about 
the teaching of his German parents and the 
German people in praise of cruelty, and how 
for twenty years now, redeemed by life in 
the United States, he has tried to make 
atonement by supporting the man whom he 
had crippled, and also his mother. Who 
shall explain to us the reason why German 
barbarism is not barbarism to the Germans ? 
Why, this German shall explain it, through 
his personal experience as a criminal But 
the day will come when the Potsdam gang 
and ten million German soldiers will stand 
before the judgment seat of God. And 
what shall be the verdict then pronounced ? 
You will find it in the New Testament: 
*' ^ Out of thine own mouth will I judge 
thee,' thou wicked and cruel German ! ^' 



64 



The German " Science of Lying " 



2. The German ** Science of Lying " 

For the first time in history a nation has 
organized lying into a science and taught 
deceit as an art. 

At the very time when the diplomats of 
the world have refused any form of secrecy 
and insist upon publishing all international 
treaties and doing everything in the open, 
Germany has organized lying into a national 
science. Even Maximilian Harden, editor of 
Zukunft, openly acknowledges this in one of 
his editorials reproduced in the papers of 
Denmark and Holland. 

Harden comes right out in the open. He 
tells the German people that at the begin- 
ning of the war it was necessary to say to 
the world that Germany was fighting a de- 
fensive war, that her back was against the 
wall, that those wicked enemies named Eng- 
land and France, Eussia and Belgium were 
leaping upon her like wolves. 

Of course, says Harden, at first that was 
good diplomacy, but now that we are suc- 
cessful, " Why say this any longer ? Let 
the Kaiser and his Chancellor tell the world 
plainly that we decided upon this war 
65 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

twenty-live years ago; that during all of 
these years we were preparing cannons and 
shells; that we drilled ten million men 
against 'Der Tag'; that we wanted this 
war, that we planned this war, that we 
forced this war and that we are proud of it." 

With one stroke Harden has torn off the 
mask. He exhibits the Kaiser as the prince 
of liars. If his words mean anything, they 
mean that what has long been surmised is 
absolutely true, namely, that Germany wished 
some one would kill the Austrian Prince and 
Princess so as to start the war, for which 
Berlin had prepared everything, down to the 
last buckle on the harness of the horses. 

General von Bissing is not less open. 
Dying men are not apt to tell lies. When 
he saw that the end was coming the Gov- 
ernor-General of Belgium prepared what he 
called his " last will and testament." 

As a close and intimate friend of the 
Kaiser, he left a letter with his will asking 
the German Government carefully to con- 
sider his wishes. He says plainly that all of 
the statements that Berlin never intended to 
annex Belgium were pure camouflage. He 
urges the Berlin oiRce to flatly declare its 
purpose never to give up a foot of the Bel- 
66 



The German " Science of Lying " 

gian coast nor an acre of the conquered terri- 
tory of north France and Belgium. 

"It is of no consequence," he says, ** that 
we have given a solemn pledge not to annex 
Belgium. Why not tell the v^^orld that we 
will have failed in the one thing for which 
we set out if we evacuate Belgium ? We 
need Belgium's coast line for our shipping." 

He adds that Germany has used twenty- 
three million tons of Belgian coal and has 
taken as much more iron ore out of France's 
basin in Briey. " We cannot live and com- 
pete with France and England if we give up 
the coal and iron mines that we have con- 
quered and the harbours that we have won." 

Having affirmed, therefore, that the Ger- 
man Government lied at the beginning in 
claiming that they entered Belgium fighting 
a defensive warfare, General von Bissing 
cast about for some one behind whom he can 
hide as a screen and who can be used as an 
authority for lying. He finds his guide and 
leader in "The Prince," written by Mach- 
iavelli. That book has often been called 
the treatise on the art of lying. !N"ever was 
such cunning exhibited. IsTever was the 
father of lies invoked with such skill as by 
the German leaders. In their sight truth is 
67 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

contemptible, kindness is weakness, honour is 
a figment. 

But the individual, the city, or the empire 
that builds its life on lies builds its house on 
sand. Soon the rains will descend and the 
floods come, the winds will blow, and the 
house will fall, and great will be the fall of 
it. 

The German is like a thirsty man who 
tries to quench his thirst by drinking scald- 
ing water. He is like a hungry man who 
tries to satisfy his appetite by eating red-hot 
coals. 



3. The Malignity of the German Spies 

Disturbed by many events in their city, 
the Secret Service men guard very carefully 
the speakers for the Liberty Loan, the Ked 
Cross or the Y. M. C. A. hut work. Fearing 
lest some German agent might injure the 
good name of their town, the Secret Service 
men of a certain community recently told the 
following incident, merely as a warning to 
all pubUc speakers who might, by their 
words, arouse the enmity of half-balanced 
German fanatics. Because it was intended 
to put us all upon our guard, and because 
68 



The Malignity of the German Spies 

no interest could possibly be injured, but 
many persons be benefited, the incident is 
here set forth in detail. The speaker was 
a young lawyer, of position, influence and 
fine education, who was serving his country 
during the period of the war. 

" One morning I received my assignment 
through a sealed envelope. Experience told 
me that I was to take up the work of some 
other Secret Service man and complete the 
task. Of course, one Secret Service man 
does not know who else is in the service. 
Since the war began we go by numbers, 
rather than by our names. When I opened 
my envelope I found these directions : * Go 

to No. . Wait until there is no 

customer in the tobacco store. Then put 
down on the counter two ten-cent pieces, and 
say to the woman, " I want that package of 
green leaf tobacco." When you have left 
the store, open the package, and you will 
find full directions therein.' I followed the 
instructions strictly, and out on the street I 
opened the package, and found a large key 
and a small one, with these words written : 
*Go to No. so-and-so (mentioning a third- 
class little apartment house in one of the 
worst districts in the city). The large key 
69 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

will open room No. 14. The small key will 
open a little writing table in the room. In 
the drawer of that table you will find full 
directions.' 

"I soon found the apartment house, 
climbed to the second floor, found my large 
key turning in the lock, and the small key 
opened the drawer in the desk. In that 
drawer I found these words : ' The man we 
want is in the adjoining room. He will 
come in about seven o'clock, but he may not 
come until eleven or twelve. It is important 
that we have his testimony. Don't wound 
him seriously or kill him. You will find a 
hole bored through the door between your 
room and his. That hole is filled with 
putty, but underneath the putty is wax. 
Warm the wire in the drawer in the gas 
jet and melt the wax.' 

" I waited until eleven o'clock for the man 
to come in. For a while he sat on the bed, 
with his back towards me. He was reading. 
Finally he lifted his pillow to shake it up, 
and I caught sight of a big revolver under 
the pillow. For several reasons I decided 
to do nothing until he had fallen asleep. I 
kept my ear glued to that little hole for one 
hour after he turned out his light. When 
70 



The Malignity of the German Spies 

he was sleeping soundly I went into the hall, 
with my skeleton key turned the lock in the 
door, and then with my lantern in the left 
hand and my revolver in the right made one 
bound into the room, struck my light and 
my revolver into his face under the light 
and shouted: 'Hands up!' Within three 
minutes I had him handcuffed and within 
ten had him bound. In that room, when 
the police came at my call, we found enough 
chemicals and powerful explosives to have 
blown up the entire block. In his satchel 
were found incriminating letters, secret docu- 
ments, and, with their help, we soon landed 
the entire crowd. All have now been taken 
care of. Their flames were stamped out be- 
fore they were kindled." That one incident 
was only one of a series of closely-related 
dramatic events. Outwardly, life in that 
city is very safe, simple and straightforward, 
but as to the forces of evil, the anarchists, 
the I. W. W.'s and German plotters the pa- 
triot can only say that but for the Secret 
Service and the police and the Department 
of Justice, society could not go on for one 
single month. 



71 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

4. The Cancer in the Body-Politic of 
Germany 

To-day, physicians and surgeons count the 
cancer man's deadliest enemy. Every year 
this baffling disease takes large and larger 
toll of human life. From time to time ex- 
perts come together to plan its limitation, 
but meanwhile the terrible disease increases. 
Addressing a company of experts recently, 
a great physician exclaimed : " Even if we 
can stop its growth by radium, it still re- 
mains for us to get rid of the growth itself. 
There seems to be no way to lift the evil 
cells out save through the knife, after which 
nature must heal the wound. Science knows 
no other way." Plainly, no magic can be 
invoked. No miracle assists the surgeon. 
His one recourse is to the knife, and after 
that the heahng forces of nature. 

Let us confess that the knife has a large 
place in the extermination of social diseases. 
Militarism is a cancer on the German body- 
politic, just as slavery was once a cancer 
fastened on the fair body of the great South. 
That disease had fastened itself upon the 
South many years before the Civil "War. 
Like a cancer, it spread its roots throughout 

^2 



Cancer in the Body- Politic of Germany 

the whole social and economic structure of 
the Southern States. It poisoned trade. Its 
virus was in the body of law. It destroyed 
kindness and sympathy for the weak. 
Slavery debased the poor white working- 
man. It made the white fathers of mulatto 
children so cruel that they sold their own 
flesh and blood. Overseers became brutes. 
Slave drivers stood up and bid upon their 
own children in the auction markets. Slowly 
the disease spread. Men became alarmed. 
They tried everything excepting the knife 
held in the hand of war surgeons. Clay 
recognized the cancer in the body politic. 
He proposed compromise as a poultice. 
Garrison and Phillips proposed the amputa- 
tion of the diseased limb. John Brown tried 
to put sulphuric acid upon the sore spots and 
eat it out through the flames of insurrection. 
Lincoln knew that it was a case of life or 
death. The Kepublic could not endure half 
slave and half free. All measures failed. 
Finally the god of war went forth and lifted 
a knife heated red hot and cut the foul 
cancer out of the body and saved the fair 
South. When many years had passed nature 
healed the wound and saved the life of the 
Eepublic. 

73 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

Germany, Austria and Turkey to-day are 
patients in a world hospital. It is plain that 
they are stricken with death. The foul 
cancer of militarism has fastened itself upon 
Germany. The cancer of autocracy is eat- 
ing into the vitals of Austria. The cancer 
of polygamy is enmeshed in the life of 
Turkey. Of late the disease has been 
spreading. Now these surgeons, named 
Foch, Haig and Pershing, have been 
anointed by the ointment of war black and 
sulphurous, and, lifting their scalpel, these 
men have been ordained to cut out the foul 
growth from the body-politic of Germany. 
Perchance there is still enough vital force 
left therein to heal the wound after the 
disease has been removed. Meanwhile, the 
sick man of Turkey struggles. The patient 
hates the knife. The diseased body will not 
have the only instrument that holds possible 
cure, and yet, despite all his struggle, the 
disease must come out. Slowly the surgical 
process goes on. One root at Yerdun was 
cut, and now another is being sundered in the 
West. Much blood flows, but the blood is 
black and foul. Every cell in the German 
body-politic seems to be diseased. Medicines 
must be found. The stimulants of sound 
74 



The Collapse of the Family in Germany 

ethics and morals must be invoked — after 
that it is a question of the recuperative 
forces of intellect and conscience in the Ger- 
man people. These forces alone can heal 
the wound left after the foul cancer has been 
cut away. To-day, men with a large mind, 
blessed with magnanimity, kindness and 
good- will must stay their hearts upon history, 
that shows us that in the past in our own 
country slavery was a cancer cut out by the 
surgeons of war, and that after a long time 
the great South recovered its health, its 
beauty and its usefulness. 



5. Polygamy and the Collapse of the 
Family in Germany 

The unexpected influences of this war 
upon Germany herself is a striking consider- 
ation. Few men anticipated the far-off re- 
sults of the Kaiser's alliance with the Sultan 
and his polygamous philosophy. During the 
past two years the German newspapers, 
magazines and debates in the Eeichstag have 
been filled with startling suggestions con- 
cerning the family. The Berliner Lokalan- 
zeiger, on March 7, 1916, published a state- 
ment urging that "every girl should be 
75 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

given the right on reaching twenty -five 
years to have one child born out of wedlock, 
for which she should receive from the state 
an annual allowance." 

Dr. Krohne, in his address before the 
House, says : " The decline of the birth rate 
in Germany has proceeded three times as fast 
as in the preceding twenty-five years. No 
civilized nation has hitherto experienced so 
large a decline in so short a time. Our an- 
nual number of births falls already to-day by 
660,000 below what we had a right to ex- 
pect. We should have to-day 2,500,000 
more inhabitants than we have." Comment- 
ing thereupon, the Berliner Lokalanzeiger 
demands that " illegitimate children should 
be put socially and morally on a level with 
the legitimate." 

When, therefore, the Kaiser cast about for 
an alliance with some man who could be his 
bosom friend and could love what he loves, 
the Kaiser chose the Sultan with his po- 
lygamy and the Moslem teaching with its 
harem. No British or French officer, there- 
fore, was surprised when documents like the 
following began to be found on the dead 
bodies of young German officers. This docu- 
ment is a verbatim and absolutely accurate 

76 



The Collapse of the Family in Germany 

copy of one of the many now deposited in 
the various departments of Justice and the 
War Departments in Havre and Paris : 

" Soldiers, a danger assails the Fatherland 
by reason of its dwindling birth rate. The 
cradles of Germany are empty to-day ; it is 
your duty to see that they are filled. You 
bachelors, when your leave comes, marry at 
once the girl of your choice. Make her your 
wife without delay. The Fatherland needs 
healthy children. You married men and 
your wives should put jealousy from your 
minds and consider whether you have not 
also a duty to the Fatherland. You should 
consider whether you may not honourably 
contract an alliance with one of the million 
of bachelor women. See if your wife will 
not sanction the relation. Remember, all of 
you, the empty cradles of Germany must be 
filled. 

" Your name has been given us as a capa- 
ble man, and you are herewith requested to 
take on this ofiice of honour, and to do your 
duty in a proper German way. It must here 
be pointed out that your wife or fiancee will 
not be able to claim a divorce. It is, in fact, 
hoped that the women will bear this discom- 
fort heroically for the sake of the war. You 
77 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

will be given the district of . Should 

you not feel capable of carrying on the task 
allotted to you, you will be given three days 
on which to name some one in your place. 
On the other hand, if you are prepared to 
take on a second district as well you will be- 
come * drekoffizier ' and receive a pension. 
An exhibition of photographs of women and 
maidens in the district allotted to you is to 
be seen at the office of . You are re- 
quested to bring this letter with you." 

This is an amazing document. Plainly the 
German family has broken down. But no 
household can be built on free love in 1918, 
just as no stone building can be erected on 
hay, stubble or sand. The German family 
has gone, and German society is tottering 
towards its final ruin. 



6. The Red-Hot Swords in Sister Julie's 
Eyes 

The history of heroism holds nothing finer 
than the story of Sister Julie, decorated by 
the French Government with the Cross of 
the Legion of Honour. She lived in the little 
village of Gerbeviller, now called "Gerbe- 
viller the Martyred." On August 27th the 
78 



Red-Hot Swords in Sister Julie's Eyes 

French army broke the line of the German 
Crown Prince and compelled the Huns' re- 
treat. General Clauss was ordered to go 
northeast and dig in on the top of the ridge 
some twelve miles north of Gerbeviller. The 
Germans reached the village at nine o'clock 
in the morning, and by half-past twelve they 
had looted all the houses and were ready 
to burn the doomed city. The incendiary 
wagons were filled with the firebrands 
stamped 1912. Beginning at the southern 
end of the village, the German officers and 
soldiers looted every house, shop, store and 
public building, and then set fire to the town. 
At last they came to the extreme northern 
end, where a few houses and the little hos- 
pital over which Sister Julie had charge, 
were still standing. 

About noon a German colonel with the 
blazing firebrand in his right hand stood in 
front of Sister Julie's house. It has been 
said that there are flaming swords in the 
eyes of every good woman. In that terrible 
hour the face of Sister Julie proved the 
proverb. She told the German officer that 
these few houses that were left were filled 
wath wounded French soldiers, with here 
and there a wounded German. The Hun 
79 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

answered that his men would remove the 
Germans who were wounded, but that the 
buildings must be fired. Behind him were 
several hundred buildings blazing like one 
fiery furnace. Sister Julie stood squarely 
across the path of the Hun. " While I live 
you shall not enter. You shall not kill these 
dying men. I swear it by this crucifix ! 
Your hands are already red with blood. 
God dwells within this house. Look at this 
figure of Jesus, who said, 'Woe unto him 
that offends against one of my little ones. 
These shall go away into everlasting hell.' 
I myself will bear witness against you. You 
have murdered our fifteen old men. All 
their lives long these old men did us good 
and not evil. Look at the little girls you 
have slain. God Himself will strike you 
dead." General Clauss stood dumb. He 
was embarrassed beyond all words. Fear 
also got hold upon him. He turned and 
disappeared into a group of his soldiers. 
Two or three minutes passed by. A Ger- 
man colonel came to Sister Julie. He told 
her that the houses used for wounded sol- 
diers would be spared by General Clauss 
provided Sister Julie would agree to con- 
tinue her ministrations to the wounded Ger- 
80 



Red-Hot Swords in Sister Juliets Eyes 

mans lying in her hospital. As General 
Clauss already knew that this had already 
been done, and would be, the Germans 
marched away, leaving the hospital build- 
ings uninjured. It was a victory of the soul 
of a noble woman. 

One morning last summer Sister Julie 
showed her decorations. Her face was kind, 
gentle and motherly. Her atmosphere was 
peace and serenity. She seemed a tower of 
strength. It must have been easy for dying 
French boys in those rooms to have identi- 
fied Sister Julie with Mary the Mother, who 
saw her son dying on the cross. Later on 
we met an aged woman of martyred Ger- 
beviller. She had been nursing in the hos- 
pital and had stood behind Sister Julie when 
she forbade General Clauss to light the fire- 
brands. " What did Sister Julie say ? " we 
asked the old woman. *' Oh, sir, I do not 
know, and yet I do know. She told them 
that she would ask God to strike them dead. 
In that moment I was afraid of her. She 
seemed to me more to be feared than Gen- 
eral Clauss and aU his wicked army. I can 
tell you what our good priest says about 
Sister JuUe." "And what is that?" The 
old woman could not quote the verse accu- 
8i 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

rately, but from what she said we were soon 
guided to a chapter in the old Bible, and 
there was the verse that described Sister 
Julie, with arms uplifted at the door of her 
hospital and denying access to General 
Clauss. The verse was this: "And lo! an 
angel with a flaming sword stood at the gate 
and kept the garden." 

7. The Hidden Dynamite ; the Hun's 
Destruction of Cathedrals 

In one group of ruined cellars that was 
once a splendid French city, there is a beauti- 
ful building standing. It is rich with the 
art and architecture of the sixteenth century. 
The lines are most graceful and the structure 
is the fulfillment of Keats' line : " A thing 
of beauty is a joy forever." Such a build- 
ing belongs not to the French nation, but to 
the whole human race. An architect like 
the man who planned this noble building is 
born only once in a thousand years. Every 
visitor to that ruined town asks himself this 
question : " Why did the Germans allow this 
building to remain?" An incident of the 
story of Bapaume throws a flood of light 
upon the problem. 

S2 



The Hidden Dynamite 

One year ago, when the Germans were re- 
treating from Bapaume, they looted every 
house, burned or dynamited every building 
save the Hotel de Yille. That city hall the 
Germans left standing in all its majesty and 
beauty. In front of the building they 
placed a placard containing in substance the 
statement that they left this building as a 
monument to Germany's love of art and 
architecture. 

Secretly, however, in the cellar of this 
noble building the Germans buried several 
tons of dynamite. To this dynamite they 
attached a seven-day clock. They set the 
seven-day clock to explode at eleven o'clock 
one week after the Germans had retreated. 
These beasts worked out the theory that the 
largest possible number of British and French 
officers and public men would be inspecting 
the building at that hour of the day. 

The plot was successful. Their devilish 
cunning was rewarded and their hate glutted. 
The clock struck the detonator, the dyna- 
mite exploded, blew the building and the 
visitors into atoms. Standing in the ruined 
public square, one sees nothing but that 
great shell pit where the earth opened up its 
mouth and swallowed a monument builded 
83 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

to beauty and grandeur. This other build- 
ing, therefore, that stands in the city fifty 
miles to the south of Bapaume is there for 
the sole reason that the seven-day clock 
failed to explode the dynamite — not because 
of any love of architecture that possessed the 
Germans. It is there to tell us that some 
part of the mechanism of death failed to 
connect. 

In analyzing the German mind nothing is 
more certain than the fact that they lack a 
fine sense of humour and are often quite 
devoid of imagination. 

As for sculpture, nothing can be more 
hideous than the statues of the fifteen 
Prussian kings that do not decorate, but 
simply vulgarize, the avenue leading towards 
Magdeburg. The vast broad statue of 
Hindenburg, to which the Germans come to 
drive nails and scratch their names in lead 
pencils, reminds one of the occasional public 
buildings in this country defaced by thought- 
less and vulgar boys. Nor is there anything 
in the world as ugly as the German sculptor's 
statue of the present Kaiser out at Potsdam 
Palace, unless it be the statue of an Indian 
in front of a tobacco store down in Smith- 
ville, Indian Territory, though even this is 
84 



The Hidden Dynamite 

doubtful. It hardly seems possible that one 
earth only 7,000 miles in diameter could hold 
two statues as ugly as that of the Kaiser ! 

It is this singular lack of imagination and 
failure to understand the beautiful that ex- 
plains the systematic destruction by the 
German army of the glorious cathedrals, the 
fourteenth century churches, libraries, cha- 
teaux and hotels des villes that were the 
glory and beauty of France. 

"If we cannot have these vineyards and 
orchards," said the Germans, "Frenchmen 
shall not have them." 

So they turned the land into a desert. 
Not otherwise the German seems to feel 
that if he cannot build structures as beautiful 
as these glorious buildings in France that he 
will not leave one of them standing. 

JS'ext to the Parthenon in Athens and 
St. Peter's in Kome, perhaps the world's 
best loved and most admired building was 
the Cathedral of Eheims. There Joan of 
Arc crowned Charles IX; there for cen- 
turies the noblest men of France had gone 
to receive their offices and their honours. A 
building that belonged to the world. What 
treasures of beauty for the whole human 
race in the thousand and more statues in the 

85 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

cathedral! How priceless the twelfth-cen- 
tury stained glass ! What paintings which 
have come down from the masters of Italy ! 
Whoever visited the library and the Car- 
dinal's palace without exclaiming: "What 
beautiful missals ! What illuminated manu- 
scripts ? " 

Fally conscious of the fact that they were 
impotent to produce such treasures the Ger- 
mans, unable to get closer to the cathedral 
than four miles, determined to destroy them. 
Day after day they bombed the noble 
cathedral. Gone now, too, the great stone 
roof! Fallen the flying buttresses, ruined 
the chapels. Perished all the tapestries, the 
rugs and the laces. Water stands in puddles 
on the floor. The cathedral is a blackened 
shell. 

The victim of grievous ingratitude. King 
Lear, was turned out into the snow and hail 
by his wicked daughters; and the white- 
haired old king wandered through the black- 
ness of the night beneath the falling hail. 
And, lo ! the Cathedral of Eheims is a King 
Lear in architecture — broken, wounded, ex- 
posed to the hails of the autumn and the 
snow of the winter, through the coarseness 
and vandalism of the Germans. 
86 



German Sniper Hid Behind the Crucifix 

The German Foreign Minister put it all in 
one word: "Let the neutrals cease their 
everlasting chatter about the destruction of 
Kheims Cathedral. All the paintings, statues 
and cathedrals in the world are not so much 
as one straw to the Germans over against 
the gaining of our goal and the conquest of 
their land." 

Never was a truer word spoken. The 
German lacks the imagination and the gift 
of the love of the beautiful. He would 
prefer one bologna sausage factory and one 
brewery to the Parthenon, with St. Peter's 
and Kheims Cathedral thrown in. 



8. The German Sniper Who Hid Be- 
hind the Crucifix 

For hundreds of years the French peasants 
have loved the crucifix. Many a beautiful 
woman carries a little gold cross with the 
figure of Jesus fastened thereto, and from 
time to time draws it out to press the crucifix 
to her lips. Even in the harvest fields and 
beside the road, travellers find the carved 
figure of the Saviour lifted up to draw poor, 
ignorant and sinful men to His own level. 

One of the most glorious pieces of carving 

8; 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

in France was wrought in walnut by a great 
sculptor and lifted up on a tree in the midst 
of an estate, where the peasants, resting from 
their work, could refresh their souls by love 
and faith and prayer. 

One day last summer, during the Teuton 
advance, a German oiRcer stood beneath 
that divine figure. Mentally he marked the 
place. That night when the darkness fell a 
company of German officers returned to that 
spot. One of them climbed up on the tree. 
He found that the carved figure of Jesus 
was life size. 

With the end of a rope a little platform 
was drawn up level with the foot of the 
crucifix. Two ropes were fastened to the 
outstretched arms of the Saviour. Another 
rope was fastened around the neck of Jesus, 
until the platform was made safe. Then a 
German sniper with his gun climbed up on 
the platform. He laid his rifle upon the 
shoulders of the Divine Figure, hiding his 
body behind that of Jesus. The German of- 
ficer must have chuckled with satisfaction, 
for he knew that he had found a screen be- 
hind which a murderer might hide, and the 
German villain was quite right in his 
psychology. 

88 



German Sniper Hid Behind the Crucifix 

It was true that the French soldiers loved 
that beautiful figure. To them the crucifix 
was sacred. So beautiful were their ideals, 
so lofty their spirit, so pure and high their 
imagination, that they were incapable of con- 
ceiving that a German could use the sacred 
crucifix as a screen from which to send forth 
his murderous hail. 

The green boughs of that tree hid the 
little puff of smoke. From time to time a 
French soldier would fall dead with a hole 
through his forehead. Once a French officer 
threw up his hands while the blood streamed 
from his mouth and he pitched forward dead. 

At last the French soldiers understood. 
There was a sniper behind Christ's cross. 
The French could have turned their cannon 
against that tree, but instead they simply 
kept below the trench until the night fell. 
Then in the darkness some French boys took 
their lives in their hands and crawled on 
hands and knees across 'No Man's Land. 
Lying on their backs they cut the wires 
above their heads. 

By some strange providence they dropped 

safely into the German trench and crawled 

ten yards beyond. Then they climbed into 

the tree, removed that glorious crucifix with 

89 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

the carved figure, brought it back in safety 
and at daybreak turned their cannon on the 
tree and blew the platform to pieces. 

Foul Huns had made a screen of that 
sacred figure, but the French were not will- 
ing to injure their ideals by shooting the 
crucifix to pieces. 

To-day all the world despises the Ger- 
mans. Nothing is sacred to them. Their 
souls are dead within them and when the 
soul dies, everything dies. 

The German's body may live on for twenty 
years, but you might as well pronounce the 
funeral address to-day, for the soul of Ger- 
many is dead. E'othing but a physical fight- 
ing machine now remains. 

Meanwhile, France lives. Never were 
her ideals so lofty and pure. That is why 
the world loves France. She has kept faith 
with her ideals. 



9. The Ruined Studio 
I have in my possession several photo- 
graphs of a ruined studio. Some twenty or 
thirty Germans dashed into a little French 
village one day, and demanded at the point 
of their automatic pistols the surrender by 
90 



The Ruined Studio 

the women of their rings, jewelry, money 
and their varied treasure. At the edge of 
the village was a simple little summer-house, 
in which one of the French artists had his 
studio. He had been in that valley for three 
months, sketching, and working very hard. 
Knowing that they had but a little time in 
which to do their work as vandals, the Huns 
started to ruin the studio. With big knives 
they cut the fine canvases into ruins. They 
knocked down the marbles, and the bronzes ; 
the little bust from the hand of Kodin 
was smashed with a hammer. The bronze 
brought from Eome was pounded until the 
face was ruined. One blow of the hammer 
smashed the Chinese pottery, another broke 
the plates and the porcelain into fragments. 
Then every corner of the room was defiled, 
and the pigs fled from their filthy stye. 
Across one of the canvases the German 
ofiicer wrote the words, " This is my trade- 
mark." And every other part of the canvas 
was cut to ribbons with his knife. JS'o more 
convincing evidence of the real German char- 
acter can possibly be found than these photo- 
graphs of the interior of that ruined studio. 

Here we have the reason why the Kaiser 
himself, who knew the German through and 
91 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

through, called his people Huns. Long ago 
the first Huns entered Italy. They found a 
city of marble, ivory, and silver. They left 
it a heap and a ruin. They had no under- 
standing of a palace; they did not know 
what a picture meant, or a marble; they 
were irritated by the superiority of the 
Eoman. "What they could not understand 
they determined to destroy. That is one of 
the reasons why all the marbles and bronzes 
that we have in Italy are marred and in- 
jured. The head of Jupiter is cracked ; the 
Yenus di Milo has no arms ; Aphrodite has 
been repaired with plaster ; Apollo has lost 
a part of his neck and one leg. From time 
to time an old marble is dug up in a field, 
where some ploughman has chanced upon 
the treasure. Owners hid their beautiful 
statues, ivories and bronzes, to save them 
from the vandals. Unfortunately, the mod- 
ern Huns rushed into the French towns, 
riding in automobiles, and sculptors and 
painters had no time to hide their treasures. 
The great cathedrals could not be hidden. 
The Kaiser in one of his recent statements 
boasted that he had destroyed seventy-three 
cathedrals in Belgium and France. It is all 
too true. From the beginning, the Cathedral 
92 



Was This Murder Justified ? 

of Kheims, dear to the whole world, and 
glorious through the associations of Jeanne 
d'Arc, was doomed, because the Germans, 
having no treasure of their own, and inca- 
pable of producing such a cathedral, deter- 
mined that France should not have that 
treasure. The other day, in Kentucky, a 
negro jockey came in at the tail end of 
a race, ten rods behind his rival. That night, 
the negro bought a pint of whiskey, and de- 
termined to have vengeance, so he went out 
at midnight, and cut the hamstrings of the 
beautiful horse that had defeated his own 
beast. ITow that is precisely the spirit that 
animated the German War Staff and the 
men that have devastated France and Bel- 
gium, and every man who has witnessed 
these German crimes with his own eyes 
will never be the same person again. His 
whole attitude towards the Hun is an atti- 
tude of horror and revulsion. A certain 
noble anger burns within him, as burned that 
noble passion in Dante against those crimi- 
nals who spoiled Florence of her treasures. 

lo. Was This Murder Justified? 

One raw, December day, in 1914, an 
American gentleman, widely known as trav- 
93 



The Black Soul of the Hun 

eller and correspondent, was in a hospital 
in London, recovering from his wound, re- 
ceived in Belgium. He was startled by the 
appearance of an old Belgian priest, and a 
young Belgian woman. The American au- 
thor was travelling in Belgium at the time 
of the German invasion. Quite unexpectedly 
he was caught behind the lines, near Lou- 
vain. Having heard his statement, the Ger- 
man officer recognized its truthfulness and 
sincerity, and insisted that this American 
scholar should be his guest at the Belgian 
chateau of which he had just taken posses- 
sion. The German had already shot the 
Belgian owner, and one or two of the serv- 
ants, who defended their master. To the 
horror and righteous anger of the American, 
the German officer took his place at the 
head of the table, waved the American to 
his seat, and ordered the young Belgian 
woman to perform her duties as hostess. In 
that tense moment, it was a matter of life 
and death to disobey. That German officer 
had his way, not only with the young Bel- 
gian wife, half dazed, half crazed, wholly 
broken in spirit, but with the American 
whom he sent forward to Brussels. 
Plunged into the midst of many duties in 
94 



Was This Murdef Justified ? 

connection with Americans and refugees who 
had to be gotten out of Belgium into Eng- 
land, this American author had to put aside 
temporarily any plan for the release of that 
young Belgian woman held in bondage. 
Later, when he was wounded, the American 
crossed to London for medical help. When 
the old Belgian priest and that youag woman 
stood at the foot of his bed in the hospital 
in London, all the events of that terrible 
hour in the dining-room of the Belgian 
chateau returned, and once more he lived 
through that frightful scene. The purpose 
of the visit soon became evident. The old 
Belgian priest stated the problem. He be- 
gan by saying that God alone could take 
human life since God alone could give it. 
He urged that the sorrow of the young 
woman's present was as nothing in compari- 
son to the loss of her soul should she be 
guilty of infanticide. It was the plea of a 
man who lived for the old ideals. His white 
hair, his gentle face, his pure disinterested 
spirit lent weight to his words. Then came 
the statement of the young Belgian woman. 
She told the American author of the dread- 
ful days and weeks that followed after his 
departure, that every conceivable agony was 
95 



"The Black Soul of the Hun 

wrought upon her, and that now within a 
few months, she must have a child by that 
wicked German officer. She cried out that 
the very babe would be unclean, that it 
would be born a monster, that it was as if 
she was bringing into the world an evil 
thing, doomed in advance to direst hell. 
That every day and every hour she felt that 
poison was running through her veins. She 
turned upon the old priest, saying, " You insist 
that God alone gives life ! l!Tay, no, no, no ! 
It was a German devil that gave me this 
life that now throbs within my body I And 
every moment I feel that that life is pol- 
lution. German blood is poisoned blood. 
German blood is like putrefaction and de- 
cay, soiling my innermost life." The young 
woman wept, prayed, plead, and finally in 
her desperation cried out, " Then I decide 
for myself ! The responsibility is mine. I 
alone will bear it." And out of the hospital 
she swept with the dignity and beauty of the 
Lady of Sorrows. 

A year later, in Paris, the French judge 
and court cleared the young girl who choked 
to death with a string the babe of the Ger- 
man officer who had attacked her. But 
since that time, all France and Belgium and 
96 



Was This Murder Justified ? 

the lands where there are refugees are 
discussing the question— Where does the 
right lie ? Has the French mother, cruelly 
wounded, no right? And this foul thing 
forced upon her a superior right ? Which 
path for the bewildered girl leads to peace ? 
Where does the Lord of Eight stand ? What 
chance has a babe born of a beast, abhorred 
and despised, when it comes into the world ? 
The women of the world alone can answer 
this question. 



97 



IN FRANCE 
THE IMMORTAL! 



IV 



1. The Glory of the French Soldier^s 
Heroism 

AS much as the German atrocities have 
done to destroy our confidence in the 
divine origin of the human soul, the French 
soldiers have done to vindicate the majesty 
and beauty of a soul made in the image of 
God. 

I have seen French boys that were so 
simple, brave and modest in their courage, 
so beautiful in their spirit, as to make one 
feel that they were young gods and not men. 
One day, into one of the camps, came a 
lawyer from Paris. He brought the news 
of the revival of the Latin Quarter. For 
nearly three years a shop near the Beaux 
Arts had been closed. During all this time 
the French soldier had been at the front. 
When the first call came on that August day 
he put up the wooden shutters, turned the 
93 



Glory of the French Soldier's Heroism^ 

key in the look, and marched away to the 
trenches. 

Said the lawyer: "I come from your 
cousin. The Americans are here in Paris. 
Your cousin says that if you will give me 
the keys and authorize her to open the shop 
she will take your place. She can recover 
your business, and perhaps have a little store 
of money for you when you have your * per- 
mission' or come home to rest. She tells 
me that she is your sole relative." The 
soldier shook his head, saying; "I never 
expect to come home. I do not want to 
come home. France can be freed only by 
men who are ready to die for her. I do not 
know where the key is. I do not know 
what goods are in the shop. For three 
years I have had no thought of it. I am 
too busy to make money. There are other 
things for me — fighting, and perhaps dying. 
Tell my cousin that she can have the shop." 
Then the soldier saluted and started back 
towards his trench. " Wait ! Wait ! " cried 
the attorney. Then he stooped down, wrote 
hurriedly upon his knee, a little paper in 
which the soldier authorized his cousin to 
carry on the business in his name. Scrawl- 
ing his name to the document, the soldier 
99 



In France the Immortal ! 

ran towards the place where his heart was — 
the place of peril, heroism and self-sacrifice. 
This was typical of the thousands of 
soldiers at the front, for French soldiers 
suffer that the children may never have to 
wade through this blood and muck. The foul 
creature that has bathed the world in blood 
must be slain forever. With the full consent 
of the intellect, of the heart and the con- 
science, these glorious French boys have 
given themselves to God, to freedom, and to 
France. 



2. Why the Hun Cannot Defeat the 
Frenchman 

One morning in a little restaurant in Paris 
I was talking with a British army-captain. 
The young soldier was a typical Englishman, 
quiet, reserved, but plainly a little excited. 
He had just been promoted to his captaincy 
and had received one week's " permission " 
for a rest in Paris. We had both come 
down from near Messines Ridge. 

" Of course," said the English captain, 
" the French are the greatest soldiers in the 
world." 

" Why do you say that ? " I answered. 

100 



Why the Hun Cannot Defeat the French 

"What could be more wonderful than the 
heroism, the endurance of the British at 
Yimy Kidge ? They seem to me more like 
young gods than men.'* 

To which the captain answered : " But 
you must remember that England has never 
been invaded. Look at my company! 
Their equipment is right from helmet to 
shoe, so perfectly drilled are they that the 
swing of their right legs is like the swing of 
one pendulum. I will put my British com- 
pany against the world. Still I must con- 
fess this, that, so far as I know, no English 
division of fifteen thousand men ever came 
home at night with more than five thousand 
prisoners. 

" But look at the French boys at Yerdun ! 
As for clothes, one had a helmet, another a 
hat, or a cap, or was bareheaded. One had 
red trousers, one had gray trousers and one 
had fought until he had only rags left. 
When they got within ten rods of the Ger- 
man trench they were so anxious to reach 
the Boche that they forgot to shoot and 
lifted up their big bayonets, while they 
shouted, * For God and France ! ' 

"That night when that French division 
came back ten thousand strong they brought 

lOI 



In France the Immortal ! 

more than ten thousand German prisoners 
with them to spend the night inside of 
barbed wire fences. 

"The reason is this: These Frenchmen 
fought for home and fireside. They fought 
against an invader who had murdered their 
daughters and mothers. The Huns will 
never defeat France. Before that could 
be done," exclaimed the English captain, 
" there would not be a man left in France to 
explain the reason for his defeat." 

3. " I Am Only His Wife " 

Human life holds many wonderful hours. 
Love, marriage, suffering, trouble, are crises 
full of romance and destiny, but I question 
whether any man ever passed through an 
experience more thrilling than the hour in 
which he stands at the Charing Cross or 
"Waterloo Station in London or in the great 
station in Paris and watches the hospital 
trains come in, loaded with wounded soldiers 
brought in after a great battle. 

Often fifty thousand men and women line 

the streets for blocks, waiting for the trains. 

Slowly the wounded boys are lifted from the 

car to the cot. Slowly the cot is carried to 

102 



'* I Am Only His Wife '' 

the ambulance. The nurses speak only in 
whispers. The surgeons lift the hand direct- 
ing them. You can hear the wings of the 
Angel of Death rustling in the air. 

When the automobile carrying two 
wounded boys moves down the street, the 
men and women all uncover while you hear 
whispered words, "God bless you!" from 
some father or mother who see their own 
son in that boy. 

Now and then some young girl with 
streaming eyes timidly drops a flower into 
the front of the ambulance — pansies for re- 
membrance and love— upon a boy whom she 
does not know, while she thinks of a boy 
whom she knows and loves who is some- 
where in the trenches of France. 

One morning a young nurse in the hos- 
pital in Paris received a telegram. It was 
from a young soldier, saying : " My pal has 
been grievously wounded. He is on the 
train that will land this afternoon. He has 
a young wife and a little child. You will 
find them at such and such a street. I do not 
know whether he will live to reach Paris. 
Can you see that they are at the station to 
meet him ? That was his last whispered re- 
quest to me." 

103 



In France the Immortal ! 

That afternoon at five o'clock, with her 
face pressed between the iron bars, a young 
French woman, with a little boy in her arms, 
was looking down the long platform. Many, 
many cots passed by, and still he did not 
come. At last she saw the nurse. The 
young wife did not know that her soldier 
husband had died while they lifted him out 
of the car. 

The young nurse said that she never had 
undertaken a harder task than that of lifting 
the boy in her own arms and leading the 
French girl to that cot, that she might know 
that henceforth she must look with altered 
eyes upon an altered world. A few minutes 
passed by and then a miracle of hope had 
happened. 

" I saw her," said the nurse, " with one 
hand upon his hair and the other stretched 
upward as she exclaimed : * I am only his 
wife, France is his mother ! I am only his 
wife, France is his mother ! I give him to 
France, the mother that reared him ! ' " 



4. A Soldier^s Funeral in Paris 

The two boys were incredibly happy. 
Two mornings before they had landed in 

104 



A Soldier's Funeral in Paris 

Paris. What a reception they had had in 
the soldiers' club from the splendid French 
women ! How good the hot bath had 
seemed ! Clean linen, a fresh shave, a good 
breakfast, a soft cot, plenty of blankets, 
twenty-four hours' sleep, and they had 
wakened up new men. The first morning 
they walked along the streets, looking into 
the shop windows ; in the afternoon one of 
the ladies took them to a moving picture 
show, and now on the second day here they 
were, at a little table before the cafe in one 
of the best restaurants in the Latin Quarter, 
with good red wine and black coffee, and 
plenty of cigarettes, and not even the boom 
of cannon to disturb their conversation. 
Strange that in three days they could have 
passed from the uttermost of hell to the ut- 
termost of safety and peace. "These are 
good times," said one of the boys, " and we 
are in them." 

Then they heard a policeman shouting. 
Looking up, they saw a singular spectacle. 
Just in front of them was a poor old hearse 
drawn by two horses, whose black trappings 
touched the ground. Shabbier hearse never 
was seen. Strangest of all, there was only 
a little, thin, black-robed girl walking be- 
105 



In France the Immortal ! 

hind the hearse. There were no hired 

mourners as usual. There was no large 

group of friends walking with heads bared 

in token of reverence ; there was no priest ; 

no carriages followed after. Saddest of all, 

there was not even a flower. What could * 

these things mean? How strange that I 

when they were so happy this little woman ■ 

could be so sad. 

Suddenly one of the soldier boys arose. 
He stepped into the street and looked into 
the hearse. There he saw these words : "A 
soldier of France." He began to question 
the woman. Lifting her veil, he saw a frail 
girl, and while the traffic jam increased she 
told her story. The soldier had been 
wounded at the Battle of the Marne. He 
was one of the first to be brought to Paris. 
He never walked again. " I am very poor ; 
I have only one franc a day. We have no 
friends. I borrowed money for the hearse." 

The boy returned to his fellows. " Fall in 
line, boys ! " he shouted. " Here is a soldier 
of France. This little girl has taken care of 
him for three years on one franc a day. 
Line up, everybody, and tell the men to 
swallow their coffee and wine and fall into 
the procession. Go into the shops and say 
1 06 



The Old Book-Lover of Louvain 

that a soldier of France lies here." When 
that hearse began to move there were twenty 
men and women walking as mourners be- 
hind the body. Two soldier boys walked be- 
side the frail little girl with her heavy crepe. 
As the soldiers walked along beside the 
hearse the procession began to grow. On 
and on for two long miles this slowly mov- 
ing company increased in number until one 
hundred were in line, and when they came 
into God's Acre they buried the poor boy as 
if he were a king coming in with trumpets 
from the battle. For he was a soldier of 
France. 



5. The Old Book-Lover of Louvain 
Among the fascinating pursuits of life we 
must make a large place for the collection of 
old books, old paintings, old missals and 
curios. Certain cities, like Yenice, Florence, 
Kome, Naples, and Madrid, have been for 
a thousand years like unto the Sar- 
gasso Sea in which beautiful things have 
drifted. 

Fifty years ago, men of leisure began to 
collect these treasures. Some made their 
way into Egypt and Palestine, and there un- 
107 



In France the Immortal I 

covered temples long buried in sands and 
ruins and all covered with debris. From 
time to time old missals were found in 
deserted monasteries, marbles were digged 
up in buried palaces. Men came back from 
their journeys with some lovely terra cotta, 
some ivory or bronze, some painting by an 
old master, w^hose beauty had been hidden 
for centuries under smoke and grime. The 
enthusiasm of the collectors exceeds the zest 
of men searching for gold and diamonds 
amid the sands of South Africa. 

Fifty years ago a young scholar of 
Louvain won high praise because of his skill 
in dating and naming old pictures and 
manuscripts. When ten years had passed 
by, this scholar's name and fame were spread 
all over Europe. Many museums in different 
countries competed for his services. 

The time came when the heads of galleries 
in London and Paris and Rome sent for this 
expert to pass upon some art object. During 
the fifty years this scholar came to know 
every beautiful treasure in Europe. 

In the old castles of Austria, in a monas- 
tery of Bohemia, in the house of an ancient 
Italian family, in certain second-hand book- 
stores, in out-of-the-way towns he found 
io8 



The Old Book-Lover of Louvain 

treasures as precious as pearls and diamonds 
raked out of the muck-heap. 

When death took away his only son and 
left his little grandchildren dependent upon 
himself the old book-lover looked forward 
serenely into the future. He knew that 
every year his treasures were growing more 
and more valuable. Living in his home in 
Louvain he received from time to time visits 
from experts, who came in from all the 
cities of the world to see his treasures, and 
if possible, to buy some rare book. 

Then, in August, 1914, came the great ca- 
tastrophe, as came the explosion of Vesuvius 
that buried Pompeii under hot ashes and 
flaming fire. 

One morning the old scholar was startled 
by the noise and confusion in the street. 
Looking down from his window he saw 
German soldiers, German horsemen, Ger- 
man cannon. He beheld women and chil- 
dren lined up on the sidewalk. He saw 
German soldiers assault old men. He saw 
them carrying the furniture, rugs and carpets 
out of the houses. He saw the flames 
coming out of the roofs of houses a block 
away. 

A moment later an old university pro- 
109 



In France the Immortal ! 

lessor pounded upon his door and called out 
that they must flee for their lives. There 
was only time to pick out one satchel and 
fill it with his precious manuscripts and 
costly missals. Then the two old scholars 
fled into the street with the grandchildren. 
Fortunately a Belgian driving a two- wheeled 
coal cart was passing by. Into the cart 
climbed the little grandchildren. Carefully 
the satchel filled with its treasures was also 
lifted into place. 

At that moment a German shell exploded 
beside the cart. When the old book-lover 
recovered consciousness the cart was gone, 
the grandchildren were dead and of all his 
art treasures there was left only one little 
book upon which some scholar of the twelfth 
century had toiled with loving hands. 

Carried forward among the refugees several 
hours later, Belgian soldiers lifted the old 
man into a train that was carrying the 
wounded down to Havre. In his hand the 
collector held the precious book. Excite- 
ment and sorrow had broken his heart. His 
mind also wandered. He was no longer 
able to understand the cosmic terror and 
blackness. A noble officer, himself wounded, 
put his coat under the old man's head and 
no 



The Old Book-Lover of Louvain 

made a pillow and bade him forget the Ger- 
man beast, the bomb shells, the blazing city. 
But all these foul deeds and all dangers now 
were as naught to the old man. 

" See my little book," he said. " How 
beautiful the lettering! Why, upon this 
book, as upon a ship, civilization sailed 
across the dark waters of the Middle Ages. 
Look at this book of beauty. The ugliness 
of the tenth century is dead. The cruelty 
and the slavery of bloody tyrants is dead 
also. The old cannon are quite rusted away. 
But look at this ! Behold, its beauty is 
immortal! Everything else dies. Soon all 
the smoke and blood will go, but beauty and 
love and liberty will remain." 

And then lifting the little book the old 
collector of Louvain pressed his lips to the 
vellum page, bright with the blue and crim- 
son and gold of seven hundred years, and in 
a moment passed to the souFs summer land, 
where no shriek of German shells rends the 
air, where wicked Germans have ceased from 
troubling and where the French and Bel- 
gians, worn by the cruelty of the Huns, are 
now at rest and peace. 



Ill 



In France the Immortal ! 

6. A Vision of Judgment in Martyred 
Gerbeviller 

To-day everybody knows the story of 
Gerbeviller, the martyred. 

To the northwest is that glorious capital 
of Lorraine, Nancy. Farther northwest are 
Yerdun and Toul, with our American boys. 
The region round about the martyred town 
is a region of rich iron ores. 

Some years ago, Germany found herself 
at bay, by reason of the threatened exhaus- 
tion of her iron mines in Alsace-Lorraine. 
The news that France had uncovered new 
beds of iron ore stirred Germany to a frenzy 
of envy and longing. 

High grade iron ore meant a new financial 
era for France. The exhaustion of Ger- 
many's iron mines meant industrial depres- 
sion, and finally a second and third rate 
position. Eather than lose her place Ger- 
many determined to go to war with France 
and Belgium and grab their iron mines. To 
break down resistance on the part of the 
French people, the Germans used atrocities 
that were fiendish beyond words. The 
richer the province she wished to steal, the 
more terrible her cruelties. 

112 



A Vision of Judgment 

At nine o'clock in the morning on August 
27, General Clauss and 15,000 soldiers en- 
tered Gerbeviller. Ten miles to the south 
was the remainder of the German army, 
utterly broken by the French attack. Clauss 
had been sent north to dig his trenches until 
the rest of the German army could retreat. 

Every hour was precious. The Germans 
remained in the little town from 9 a. m. until 
12:30 p. M. They found in the village 
thirty-one hundred women, girls and chil- 
dren, fifteen old men (the eldest ninety-two), 
one priest and one Ked Cross ambulance 
driver. Even the little boys and men under 
seventy had gone to the front to dig ditches 
and carry water to the French. 

It took the Germans only two and one- 
half hours to loot all the houses and load 
upon their trucks the rugs, carpets, chairs, 
pictures, bedding, with every knife and fork 
and plate. At half-past eleven General 
Clauss was in the Mayor's house, when the 
German colonel came in and reported that 
everything in the houses had been stripped 
and that they were ready to begin the firing 
of the buildings. 

The aged wife of the secretary to the 
Mayor told me this incident : 
"3 



In France the Immortal ! 

" We find no weapons in the houses, and 
we find only these fifteen old men, one Ked 
Cross boy, and this priest," said the colonel. 

" Line up the old men then and shoot 
them," shouted General Clauss. " Take the 
priest as a prisoner to do work in the 
trenches." 

The old men were lined up on the grass. 
General Clauss himself gave the signal to 
fire. Two German soldiers fired bullets into 
each one of the old men. 

One of the heart-broken onlookers was the 
village priest. The Germans carried him 
away as prisoner and made him work as a 
common labourer; through rain and sun, 
through heat and snow, he toiled on, digging 
ditches, carrying burdens, working eighteen 
hours a day, eating spoiled food that the 
German soldiers would not touch, until 
finally tuberculosis developed and he was 
sick unto death. Then the Germans released 
him as a refugee, so the priest returned to 
Gerbeviller to die. 

Then came the anniversary of the murder 
of the fifteen old men and of the one hun- 
dred and two women, girls and children. 
On the anniversary day of the martyrdom 
the noble Governor of the province as- 
114 



A Vision of Judgment 

sembled the few survivors for a memorial 
service about the graves of the martyrs. 

Knowing that the priest would never see 
another anniversary of that day the Prefect 
asked the priest to give the address at the 
memorial service. No more dramatic scene 
ever occurred in history. At the beginning 
the priest told the story of the coming of 
the Germans, the looting of the houses, the 
violation of the little girls, the collecting of 
the dead bodies. Suddenly the priest closed 
his eyes, and all unconsciously he lived the 
scene of those three and a half hours. 

" I see our fifteen heroes standing on the 
grass. I see the German soldiers lifting up 
their rifles. I hear General Clauss cursing 
and shouting the command to fire. 

" I see you, Thomas ; a brutal soldier tears 
your coat back. He puts his rifle against 
your heart. When you sink down I see 
your hands come together in prayer. 

" I see you, Fran9ois. I see the two big 
crutches on which you lean. You are weary 
with the load of ninety years. I hear your 
granddaughter when she sobs your name, 
and I see your smile, as you strive to en- 
courage her. 

" I see you, Jean. How happy you were 
115 



In France the Immortal ! 

when you came back with your wealth to 
spend your last years in your native town I 
How kind you were to all our poor. Ah ! 
Jean, you did us good and not evil, all the 
days of your life with us ! 

*' I see you, little Marie. You were lying 
upon the grass. I see your two little hands 
tied by ropes to the two peach trees in your 
mother's garden. I see the little wisp of 
black hair stretched out under your head. I 
see your little body lying dead. With this 
hand of mine upon that little board, above 
your grave, I wrote the words, ' Vengeance 
is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord.' 

" And yonder in the clouds I see the Son 
of Man coming in His glory with His angels. 
I see the Kaiser falling upon Gerbeviller. I 
see Clauss falling upon our aged Mayor. 
But I also see God arising to fall upon the 
Germans. Berlin, with Babylon the Great, 
is fallen. It has become a nest of unclean 
things. There serpents dwell. Woe unto 
them that offend against my little ones. For, 
lo, a millstone is hanged about their necks 
and they shall be drowned in the sea with 
Satan." 

The excitement was too much for the 
priest. That very night he died. Hence- 
ii6 



The Return of the Refugees 

forth he will be numbered among the mar- 
tyrs of Gerbeviller. 



7. The Return of the Refugees 

The return of the refugees to Belgium 
and France holds the essence of a thousand 
tragedies. From the days of Homer down 
to those of Longfellow, with his story of 
Evangeline, literature has recounted the sad 
lot of lovers torn from one another's arms 
and all the rest of their lives going every 
whither in search of the beloved one, only to 
find the lost and loved when it was too late. 

But nothing in literature is so tragic as 
the events now going on from week to week 
in the towns on the frontier of Switzer- 
land. 

When the Germans raped Belgium and 
northern France they sent back to the rear 
trenches the young women and the girls, 
and now, from time to time, those girls, all 
broken in health, are released by the Ger- 
mans, who send them back to their parents 
or husbands. 

Multitudes of these girls have died of 
abuse and cruelty, but others, broken in 
body and spirit, are returning for an interval 
117 



In France the Immortal ! 

that is brief and heart-breaking before the 
end comes. 

Three weeks ago an old friend returned 
from his Ked Cross work in France. By in- 
vitation of a Government official he visited 
a town on the frontier through which the 
refugees released by Germany were returning 
to France. 

It seemed that during the month of Sep- 
tember, 1914, the Germans had carried away 
a number of girls and young women in a 
village northeast of Luneville. When the 
French officials finished their inquiry as to 
the poor, broken creatures returning to 
France they found a French woman, clothed 
in rags, emaciated and sick unto death. In 
her arms she held a little babe a few weeks 
old. Its tiny wrists were scarcely larger 
than lead pencils. The child moaned inces- 
santly. The mother was too thin and weak 
to do more than answer the simple questions 
as to her name, age, parents, and husband. 

Moved with the sense of compassion, the 
French official soon found in his index the 
name of her husband, the number of his 
company and telegraphed to the young sol- 
dier's superior officer, asking that the boy 
might be sent forward to the receiving sta- 
ii8 



The Return of the Refugees 

tion to take his wife back to some friend, 
since the Germans had destroyed his village. 
By some unfortunate blunder the officials 
gave no hint of the real facts in the case. 

Filled with high hope, burning with en- 
thusiasm, exhaling a happiness that cannot 
be described, the bronzed farmer-soldier 
stepped down from the car to find the 
French official waiting to conduct him to 
one of the houses of refuge where his young 
wife was waiting. 

My American Eed Cross friend witnessed 
the meeting between the girl and her hus- 
band. When the fine young soldier entered 
the room he saw a poor, broken, spent, mis- 
erable creature, too weak to do more than 
whisper his name. When the young man 
saw that tiny German babe in his young 
wife's arms he started as if he had been 
stung by a scorpion. Lifting his hands 
above his head, he uttered an exclamation 
of horror. In utter amazement he started 
back, overwhelmed with revulsion, anguish 
and terror. 

Gone — the beauty and comeliness of the 
young wife ! Gone her health and allure- 
ment ! Perished all her loveliness ! Her 
garments were the garments of a scarecrow. 
119 



In France the Immortal ! 

Despite all these things the girl was inno- 
cent. But she realized her husband's horror 
and mistook it for disgust. She pitched for- 
ward unconscious upon the floor before her 
husband could reach her. 

The history of pain contains no more ter- 
rible chapter. That night the dying girl 
told the French officials and her husband the 
crimes and indignities to which she had been 
subjected. Two other babes had been born 
under German brutality, and both had died, 
even as this infant would die, and when a 
few days later her husband buried her he was 
another man. The iron in him had become 
steel. The blade of intellect had become a 
two-edged sword. His strength had become 
the strength of ten. He decided not to sur- 
vive this war. Going back to the front, he 
consecrated his every day to one task — to 
kill Germans and save other women from 
the foulest degenerates that have ever cursed 
the face of the earth. 



8. An American Knight in France 

Coming around the corner of the street in 
a little French village near Toul, I beheld an 
incident that explained the all but adoring 
1 20 



An American Knight in France 

love given to our American boys by the 
French children. The women and the girls 
of that region had suffered unspeakable 
things at the hands of the German swine. 
Photographs were taken of the dead bodies 
of girls that can never be shown. The terror 
of the women at the very approach of the 
German was beyond all words. The very 
words " Les Boches " send the blood from 
the cheeks of the children. The women of 
the Dakotas on hearing that the Sioux 
Indians were on the war-path with their 
scalping knives were never so terrified as 
the French girls are on hearing the German 
soldiers are on the march. Even the little 
children have black rings under their eyes, 
with a strained, tense expression as they 
stand tremulous and ready to run. 

On the sidewalk near me was a little 
French girl of about six, with her little 
brother, perhaps four years of age. Sud- 
denly around the corner came an American 
boy in khaki. He was swinging forward 
with step sure and alert. The children 
turned, but there was no terror in their eyes 
and no fear in their hearts. They did not 
know the American soldier; never before 
had they seen his face, but his khaki meant 

121 



In France the Immortal ! 

safety. It meaat a shield lifted between the 
German monster and themselves. Forgetting 
everything, the little French girl started on 
a run towards the American soldier, while 
her little brother came hobbling after. She 
ran straight to the American boy, flung her 
arms around his legging, rubbed her chef ^'^ 
against his trousers and patted his knee wiin 
her little hands. A moment later when her 
little brother came up the American boy 
stooped down, lifted the boy and girl into 
his arms, and while they were screaming 
with delight carried them across to a little 
shop, and found for them two tiny little 
cakes of chocolate, the only sweet that 
could be had. The French children under- 
stand. 

The German motto was: " Frightfulness 
and terrorism are the very essence of our 
new w^arfare." 

Pershing's charge was : " You will protect 
all property, safeguard all lives, lift a shield 
above the aged, be most courteous to the 
women, most tender and gentle to the chil- 
dren." 

In France our boys have lifted a shield 
above the poor and the Tveak, and, having 
given service, they are receiving a degree of 

122 



An American Soldier^s Grave in France 

love beyond measure ; but there is no danger 
that they will be spoiled by the adulation of 
the French women and children, who rank 
them with the knights and the heroes of old. 



9. An American Soldier^s Grave in 
France 

One August morning I was in the wheat 
fields near Eoye. Somewhere in that field 
the body of a noble American boy was lying. 
He was a graduate of the University of 
Virginia ; his mother and his sister had a 
host of friends in my old home city, Chicago. 
Guided by a white-haired priest, out in the 
wheat we found at last a little mound with a 
part of a broken airplane lying thereupon. 
I pulled the rest of his machine upon his 
grave and learned that when the French 
boys picked him up they found that four 
explosive bullets had struck him while flying 
in the air after his victory over many Ger- 
man enemies. 

With my knife I cut a sheaf of golden 
grain and an armful of scarlet poppies and 
said a prayer for the boy and his mother and 
his sister. 

Standing there in the rain I wrote a letter 
123 



In France the Immortal ! 

to those who loved him, saying : " When you 
see this head of wheat, say to yourself * One 
grain going into the ground shall in fifteen 
summers ripen into bread enough to feed 
sixteen hundred millions of the family of 
men.' When you look at this pressed poppy, 
say, * His blood like red rain went to the 
root to make the flowers crimson and beauti- 
ful for all the world; soon the fields of 
France shall wave like a Garden of God, 
and peace and plenty shall dwell forever 
there. " Without shedding of blood there is 
no remission." Wine means the crushing of 
the grapes. At great price our fathers 
bought Liberty.' " 

Two thousand years ago Cicero, sobbing 
above the dead body of his daughter Tullia, 
exclaimed : " Is there a meeting place for 
the dead ? " What becomes of our soldier 
boys who died on the threshold of life ? 
This is life's hardest problem. Where is 
that young Tullia so dear to that gifted 
Eoman orator? Where is that young 
musician Mozart ? Where is young Keats ? 
And where is Shelley? And where are 
young McConnell and Eupert Brooke and 
young Asquith ? And ten thousand more 
of those young men with genius. Where also 
124 



" These Flowers, Sir " 

is that y5uiig Carpenter of Nazareth, dead at 
thirty years of age ? 

The answer is in this : They have passed 
through the black waters and have come 
into the summer land. There they have 
been met by the heroes coming out with 
trumpets and banners to bring them into a 
world unstained by the smoke and din of 
battle. There they will write their books, 
invent their tools, complete their songs and 
guide the darkling multitudes who come in out 
of Africa, out of the islands of the sea, into the 
realm of perfect knowledge, love and peace. 



lo. "These Flowers, Sir, I Will Lay 
Them Upon My Son's Grave " 

Last August, at an assembly in Paris, 
Ambassador Sharp held a little company 
spellbound, while he related several incidents 
of his investigations in the devastated region 
near Eoye. One afternoon the captain 
stopped his military automobile upon the 
edge of what had once been a village. Sur- 
veyors were tracing the road and making 
measurements in the hope of establishing the 
former location of the cellar and the house 
that stood above it. An old gray-haired 
125 



In France the Immortal ! 

Frenchman had the matter in charge. He 
had lost the cellar of his house. Also, the 
trees that had stood upon his front sidewalk, 
also his vines and fruit trees. His story as 
stated by Ambassador Sharp was most 
pathetic. The old man had retired from 
business to the little town of his childhood. 
When it became certain that the Germans 
would take the village, the man pried up a 
stone slab in the sidewalk and buried his 
money, far out of sight. A long time passed 
by. When the Hindenburg plans were 
completed, the Germans made their retreat. 
Among other refugees who returned ^vas 
the aged Frenchman. To his unbounded 
amazement the old man could not locate the 
site of his old home. In bombarding the 
little village, the Germans dropped huge 
shells. These shells fell into the cellar, and 
blew the brick walls away. Other shells fell 
in the front yard, and blew the trees out by 
the roots. Later other shells exploding blew 
dirt back into the other excavations. Little 
by little, the ground was turned into a mass 
of mud. ISTot a single landmark remained. 
Finally the old man conceived the idea of 
beginning back on the country road, and 
measuring what he thought would have been 
126 



" These Flowers, Sir " 

the distance to his garden. But even that 
device failed him. For the huge shells had 
blown the stone slab into atoms, scattered 
his buried treasure, and left the man in his 
old age penniless and heart-broken. 

Long ago Dumas represented the man 
who had taken too much wine as trying in 
vain to enter his own home, explaining to 
his inebriated friend that the keyhole was 
lost. But think of a cellar that is lost! 
Think of shade trees, whose very roots have 
disappeared ! Think of a lovely little French 
garden with its roses and vines, and fruit 
trees, all gone ! " Why, the very well was 
with difficulty located," said the Ambassa- 
dor. But after all, the loss of buried treas- 
ure that could never be found is only a 
faint emblem of the loss of human bodies 
and human minds. Think of the soldiers 
who have returned to find that the young 
wife or daughter whom they loved has dis- 
appeared forever ! And think of the wives 
and sweethearts who have received word 
from their officers that the great shell ex. 
ploded and killed the lover, but that no 
fragment of his body could be found! 
During one day Mr. Chamberlain and my- 
self were driven through twenty-four series 
127 



In France the Immortal ! 

of ruins, that once had been towns and vil- 
lages, but where there was nothiug left but 
cellars filled with twisted iron and blackened 
rafters. Already, men are anticipating the 
hour of victory and talking about the recon- 
struction of the devastated regions, the en- 
forced service of a million German facto- 
ries, building up what once they had torn 
down. But the restoring of houses, the 
restoration of factory and schoolhouse, of 
church and gallery, represent a material re- 
covery. But the other day, a French woman 
was invited before the general who deco- 
rated the widow and praised her, returning to 
her the thanks of France, in that her last and 
seventh son had just been killed. Her re- 
sponse was one of the most moving things in 
history. "I have given France my all. 
These flowers, ah, sir, I have but one use for 
them. I will take them out, and lay them 
on my son's grave." 

1 1 . The Courage of Clemenceau 

One Sunday afternoon, last August, in 
Paris, Alexandre, head of the Fine Arts De- 
partment of the Government, brought me 
an invitation from Eodin to visit his studio. 
We found the successor to Michael Angelo 
128 



The Courage of Clemenceau 

turning over in his hand an exquisite little 
head of Minerva, goddess of wisdom, carved 
with the perfection of a lily or a rose. " He 
is always studying something," exclaimed 
the author. But what Kodin wanted us to 
see was his head of Clemenceau. When the 
covering was lifted, there stood the very 
embodiment of the man who is supreme in 
France to-day, — Clemenceau. The sculp- 
tor's face kindled and lighted up. "The 
lion of France!" How massive the fea- 
tures ! How glorious the neck and the 
shoulders ! Clemenceau makes me think of 
a stag, holding the wolves at bay, while his 
herd finds safety in flight. He makes me 
think of the lion, roaring in defence of his 
whelps. Our descendants will say, of a 
truth there were giants in those days, and 
among the giants we must make a large 
place for Clemenceau. 

The invincible courage of Clemenceau is in 
the challenge he has just flung out to the 
enemies of France. Keduced to simple 
terms it comes to this, — " It is said that the 
Germans can get within bombing distance of 
Paris, or reach the capital, providing they 
are willing to pay the price. Well, — the 
Allies can break through the German line 
129 



In France the Immortal ! 

and gain the Ehine, providing they are 
willing to pay the price. To destroy Paris 
means a price of Y60,000 Germans at least. 
The probabilities are that so heavy a price 
would mean a political revolution in Ger- 
many. But what if Ludendorff gets to Paris ? 
Eome was twice destroyed, and later the 
city of brick was rebuilt as a city of marble. 
Nearly fifty years ago the people of Paris 
destroyed their own city, at an expense of 
hundreds of millions of francs. The motive 
back of the destruction was the desire to re- 
place an old and ugly city by a new and the 
most beautiful city in the world. Fire des- 
troyed Chicago, intellect rebuilt it, — earth- 
quake and flame levelled San Francisco, 
courage restored the ruins. Enemies may 
destroy Paris, genius and French art and 
skill and industry and will, will replace it. 
Our eyes are fixed on the goal, namely, the 
crushing of Prussianism. What if Paris 
must decrease? It will only mean that 
civilization in France, and humanity, will in- 
crease." Keduced to the simplest terms, that 
is the substance of Clemenceau's appeal. 
Never was there courage more w^onderful. 
Not even Leonidas at Thermopylae ever 
breathed nobler sentiments. That is why 
130 



The Courage of Clemenceau 

Paris is safe to-day. That is why France is 
secure. That is why we await with confi- 
dence and quietness the next great offensive 
for the Germans. 

In her darkest hour what France and the 
world needed was a hero, a man of oak and 
rock, a great heart, a lion,— and the world 
found such a man in Clemenceau. Nothing 
fascinates the listeners like tales of courage. 
Not even stories of love and eloquence have 
such a charm for children and youth. Many 
of us remember that in our childhood the 
crippled soldier of the Civil War became a 
living college, teaching bravery to the boys 
of the little town. For months Clemenceau 
has been going up and down France, hearten- 
ing the people. This Prime Minister with 
his great massive head, the roaring voice, 
the clenched fist, is an exhilarating spectacle. 
That hero of Switzerland, William Tell, left 
behind him a tradition that it meant much 
to him to waken each morning and find 
Mont Blanc standing firm in its place. Not 
otherwise all patriots, soldiers, and lovers of 
their fellow men to-day can look on the great 
French statesman and patriot and gather 
comfort and courage from the fact that he 
still stands firmly in his place. 
131 



OUR 

BRITISH ALLIES 



1. ** Gott Strafe England ''—'* and Scot- 
land " 

AT the crossroads near the city of Ypres 
is a sign-board giving the directions 
and the distances to various towns. One 
day the Germans captured that highway. 

There was a man in the company who 
had lived in some German-American city 
of the United States. He knew that but 
for England Germany would have gotten 
through to the Channel towns and looted 
Paris. Climbing up on the sign-board that 
German- American wrote in good plain Eng- 
lish these words : " God England ! " 

That afternoon the Australian and the ISTew 
Zealand army pushed the Germans back and 
recaptured the highway. Among other sol- 
diers was a Scotsman named Sandy. 

He read the sign, " God England ! " 

with ever increasing anger. Finally he flung 
132 



*' Gott Strafe England "— " and Scotland " 

his arms and legs around the sign-post, pulled 
himself ujd to the top and, while his com- 
panions watched him, they saw him do a 
most amazing thing. 

They were cheering him because they ex- 
pected him to rub out the word " England." 
But not Sandy I Holding on by his left 
hand, with his right Sandy added to the 

words " God England ! " these words, 

"and Scotland." 

He felt that it was an outrage that Scot- 
land should be overlooked in any good thing. 
Blessed was the people who had won the 
distinction of being hated by the German, 
and therefore Sandy added the words " and 
Scotland " ! 

Now Scotland deserved that high praise. 
When the historian comes to write the full 
story of this great war it will make a large 
place for the words " and Scotland." Won- 
derful the heroism of the British army! 
Marvellous their achievements ! But who is 
at the head of it? A great Scotsman, Sir 
Douglas Haig. 

What stories fill the pages of the achieve- 
ments of English sailors ever since the days 
of Nelson, standing on the deck of the Vic- 
tory y down to the battle of Jutland! But 
133 



Our British Allies 

that gallant Scot, Admiral Beatty, holds the 
centre of the stage to-day. There came a 
critical moment also when a man of intel- 
lect and a great heart must represent Great 
Britain in her greatest crisis in the United 
States, and in that hour they sent a Scots- 
man, Arthur James Balfour, philosopher, 
metaphysician, theologian, statesman, diplo- 
mat and seer. 

And what shall one more say save that 
the finances of this war have been controlled 
by a Scotch Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
and her railways organized by a Scotch in- 
ventor. "Wonderful the achievements of 
England — that "dear, dear land." Marvel- 
lous the contribution of Wales, through men 
like the Prime Minister, Lloyd George ! 

Who can praise sufficiently the heroes of 
Canada, Australia and New Zealand? In 
Ireland, for the moment, things are in a 
muddle. "What is the trouble with the 
Emerald Isle ? " was the question, to which 
the Irishman made instant reply : " Oh, in 
South Ireland we are all Eoman Catholics, 
and in North Ireland we are all Protestants, 
and I wish to heaven we were all agnos- 
tics, and then we could live together like 
Christians." 

134 



" England Shall Not Starve '' 

But Ireland will soon iron out her troubles. 
To the achievements of the various people of 
the great British Empire let us make a large 
place for the contributions of Scotland. The 
Germans hate with a deadly hatred any 
country and any race that has stopped them 
in their headlong career towards crime. 

But the next time that a German- American 
has gone back to Berlin and has reached the 
western front and puts up a sign reading 
" Gott strafe England " let him not fail to 
add these words, " and Scotland." 



2. '' England Shall Not Starve '' 
Despite all warnings, rumours, and alarms, 
no dire peril known to passengers disturbed 
our voyage. The nearest approach came on 
a morning when the ship was two hundred 
miles off the coast of Ireland. 

The steamer was making a letter S and 
constantly zigzagging, when suddenly the 
lookout called down that there was a row- 
boat dead ahead. With instant decision the 
officer changed the ship's course and we 
passed the life-boat a half mile upon our 
right. 
The usual rumour started up and down 
135 



Our British Allies 

the deck that there were dead bodies in the 
boat, but the petty officer answered my 
question by saying that it was 2,000 lives 
against one possible life that every drifting 
boat must be looked upon as a German 
decoy ; that if the steamer stopped to send 
sailors with a life-boat to investigate it would 
simply give a German submarine a chance to 
come up with torpedoes. At that very mo- 
ment one of the men beside the gun sighted 
a periscope and a moment later the gun 
roared and then boomed a second time and 
then a third. Because the object disap- 
peared, all passengers said it was a sub- 
marine, but the officers said it was a piece 
of driftwood, tossed up on the crest of a 
wave. 

That night, on deck, a close friend of the 
purser came for an hour's walk around the 
deck. The memory of those three shots 
rested heavily upon his mind. 

It seemed that some months before he had 
been a purser on an East Indian liner. On 
the home voyage, twenty-four hours after 
they left Cairo, when well out into the 
Mediterranean, this officer went below for 
an hour's rest. Suddenly a torpedo struck 
the steamer. The force of the explosion 
136 



" England Shall Not Starve " 

literally blew the purser out of his berth. 
Grabbing some clothes, he ran through the 
narrow passageway, already ankle deep in 
rushing water. The great ship carried 
several thousand soldiers and a few women 
who were coming home from India or from 
Egypt. Despite the fact that all realized the 
steamer would go down within a few min- 
utes, there was no confusion and the soldiers 
lined up as if on parade. 

The boat went down in about eight min- 
utes, but every one of the women and chil- 
dren had on their life-preservers and were 
given first places in the life-boats that had 
not been ruined by the explosion. 

The purser said that he decided to jump 
from the deck and swim as far as possible 
from the steamer, but despite his struggles 
he was drawn under and came up half un- 
conscious to find himself surrounded with 
swimming men and sinking rowboats that 
were being shelled by the German sub- 
marine. Suddenly a machine-gun bullet 
passed through his right shoulder and left 
an arm helpless. For half an hour he lay 
with his left arm upon a floating board, held 
up by his life-preserver. The submarine had 
disappeared. At distances far removed 
137 



Our British Allies 

were three of the ship's boats and one raft. 
It was plain that there was no help in 
sight. 

Kear him was a woman, to whom he 
called. The purser told the woman that he 
had been shot in the right arm and could not 
help her nor come near to her. She an- 
swered that it was good to hear his voice. 

The water was very cold. He began to 
be alarmed and reasoned as to whether the 
cold water would not stay the bleeding. 
From time to time he would call out to the 
woman to keep up hope and courage and not 
to struggle, but at last he saw she was ex- 
hausted. "With infinite effort, swimming 
with his left arm, he managed to draw near 
to her. 

" Is drowning very painful ? " the woman 
asked. 

"No," answered the officer. "Once the 
water rushes into the lungs one smothers." 

To which the English girl answered, 
" Then I think I will not wait any longer. 
Good-bye ! Good luck ! " 

Utterly exhausted she let her head fall 
over and in a moment the life-preserver was 
on the top and that was all that he saw. 

"The next thing I remember," said the 
138 



** England Shall Not Starve '' 

officer, " was waking up to find a nurse try- 
ing to pour a stimulant down my throat." 

A destroyer had come up in response to 
the signals for help and picked up the 
survivors. 

For months he was in the hospital before 
he could be carried to England. Even now 
he was not able to lift a hat from his head 
with his right arm, but he could write a little. 
This was his first voyage to test his strength 
to prove to the Government that he could 
take his old task as purser. 

"How did you feel, purser, when you 
heard that cannon roar this morning against 
that submarine ? " 

You should have seen the fire flash in the 
man's eyes. 

" How did I feel ? " answered the officer. 
*' I felt like a race-horse snuffing the battle 
from afar. Let them sink this ship — I will 
take another. Let them sink every steamer, 
I'll take a sailing vessel. Let them sink all 
our sailing vessels, we will betake ourselves 
to tugs. 

" We have 5,000 steamers that come and 

go between any Sunday and Sunday. Some 

are old cattle-boats, some are sea tramps and 

some are ocean hounds. They have carried 

139 



Our British Allies 

10,000,000 men and 20,000,000 tons of war 
materials, and 8,000,000 tons of iron ore and 
^3,000,000,000 worth of goods. 

" We have lent six hundred ships to 
France and four hundred ships to Italy. 
Our ancestors smashed the Spanish Armada. 
Our grandfathers baffled Napoleon and their 
sons defy the Hun and his submarine. 

" When I go down my son will take my 
place. When Germany beats England there 
will not be an Englishman left to tell how it 
happened." 

Then, leaning over the railing of the ship, 
the officer pointed to the setting sun, and lo, 
right out of the sea, sailing into our sight, 
came a fleet of English merchantmen, laden 
with wheat, and the purser said : 

"By God's help, England shall not 
starve." 



3. German- Americans Who Vilify Eng- 
land 

The biography of Grant holds many excit- 
ing incidents. One of them concerns a spy 
who nearly wrecked Grant's plans. It seems 
that a rumour came saying that Sheridan 
had been defeated at Winchester. A tele- 
140 



German-Americans Who Vilify England 

gram came a few minutes later saying that 
Sheridan was recovering from the disaster. 
Meanwhile, Grant noticed one of his young 
assistants was endeavouring in vain to con- 
ceal his pleasure over the news of Sheridan's 
defeat. That feeling seemed inexplicable to 
Grant. The Commander-in-Chief had three 
armies — Sherman's in the South, Sheridan's 
in the Yalley of the Shenandoah, and his 
own army of the Potomac. How could a 
young aide rejoice over Sheridan's defeat 
without down in his heart wanting Grant 
defeated, the Union destroyed, and secession 
made a success? Grant became more and 
more alarmed. He told one of his associates 
to follow this youth, whom he feared was a 
spy. Shortly afterwards the man Vv^as dis- 
covered sending signals, was tried, the proofs 
of his treason uncovered, and finally he was 
executed. 

To-day certain German- Americans never 
tire of announcing their Americanism. Their 
favourite expression is : ^' Germany was the 
Fatherland, but the United States is the 
wife." Not daring, therefore, to attack our 
Government, afraid to confess that they want 
Germany to succeed, and when that time 
comes expect to hold certain offices under 
141 



Our British Allies 

Germany, they spend all their time vilifying 
Great Britain. There is one absolute and 
invariable test of the German-American's 
treason to this country, and that is bitter- 
ness towards England, because England is 
doing all she can to prevent Germany's vic- 
tory. One thing has saved this country 
during four years, giving us a chance to 
prepare— Great Britain's fleet, holding Ger- 
many's battle-ships behind the Kiel Canal. 
To-day our Kepublic is defended by three 
armies — General Pershing's, Marshal Foch's 
and Marshal Haig's. But whenever a Ger- 
man-American vilifies Haig and attacks Eng- 
land you may know that down in his heart 
he wants Pershing defeated, the United 
States conquered, and Germany made vic- 
torious. The German- American who vilifies 
Great Britain is angry because Great Britain 
has prevented Germany from loading a mil- 
lion German veterans upon her six or eight 
thousand passenger ships, freight ships, sail- 
ing vessels and war fleet, and sailing to New 
York and assessing fifty billion dollars in- 
demnity upon us. 

In a certain Western State a German pro- 
fessor of electricity resigned from his insti- 
tution. He was receiving about $3,000 a 
142 



German-Americans Who Vilify England 

year. Many months passed by. One day 
this man was heard defaming England. 
" England has destroyed the freedom of the 
seas. England controls Gibraltar and the 
Suez Canal. England is the great land 
pirate. England is the world butcher." A 
Secret Service man followed the German 
pi'ofessor, and found that he was working as 
fireman at the wireless station of that great 
city. This German professor of electricity 
had resigned a $3,000 a year position to 
work for $Y5 a month as fireman. As soon 
as he found that the United States Govern- 
ment was upon his track he fled to Mexico. 
This spy's camouflage was love for the United 
States, but his treason was revealed through 
his hatred of England. That man should 
have been arrested at dark, tried at mid- 
night, and shot at daybreak. 

There is a newspaper reporter in this coun- 
try. This Germ an- American was caught by 
a trick. Another reporter faked a story, 
writing out on his typewriter an account 
of several German submarines getting into 
the harbour of Liverpool and blowing up 
half a dozen English steamers and killing 
several thousand Englishmen, and this Ger- 
man-American reporter lifted his hands into 
143 



Our British Allies 

the air in glee, and in the presence of half a 
dozen fellow reporters shouted : " I knew it ! 
I knew it ! I Imew the Germans would 
smash Hades out of them!" In that mo- 
ment he revealed his real attitude towards 
the United States. Any man that wants 
Admiral Beatty defeated wants the Amer- 
ican transports sunk and American soldiers 
murdered. That reporter should also have 
been arrested at dark, tried at midnight, and 
shot at daybreak. 

In another city there is a young Irish 
writer. He fulfills all the proverbs about 
the crazy Irishman. In connection with the 
Sinn Fein conspiracy this young writer pro- 
posed a toast to the memory of Sir Koger 
Casement, the success of the revolution, and 
poured forth such bitterness upon England 
as cannot be described by those who hate 
ingratitude towards a country that has given 
us a chance to prepare. Wherever that man 
goes he carries hate with him towards Great 
Britain. His atmosphere is malign ; his 
presence breathes treason towards England. 
That is another man who should have been 
arrested at dark, tried at midnight, and shot 
at daybreak. No man can serve God and 
Mammon. No man can be faithful to the 
144 



British vs. American Girls 

United States who hates England and loves 
Germany. He must love the one and hate 
the other ; he must hold to the one and de- 
spise the crimes of the other. No man can 
serve God and the Allies, Germany and the 
devil, at one and the same time. 



4. British vs. American Girls in Muni- 
tion Factories 

To-morrow morning at eight o'clock one 
million British girls will enter the munition 
and related factories. To-morrow afternoon 
at four o'clock another million girls will 
enter the same factories, to be followed at 
midnight by the third shift of women. 

These factories average forty feet wide, 
and end to end would be 100 feet in length. 
The roar of the machinery is never silent by 
day or night. 

In one factory I saw a young woman who 
was closely related, through her grandfather, 
to a man in the House of Lords. Her arms 
were black with machine oil, her hair was 
under a rubber cover, she wore bloomers. 
Her task was pouring two tons of molten 
steel into the shell moulds. The great shells 
passed from the hands of one girl to another 
145 



Our British Allies 

until the fiftieth girl, 1,500 feet away, fin- 
ished the threads into which the cap's screw 
was fastened. 

Every twenty-four hours these women 
turn out more small calibre cartridges than 
all England did the first year of this war. 
Every forty-eight hours they turn out more 
large cartridges than all England did the 
first year of this war. Every six days, with 
the help of men not fit for the battle front, 
they turn out more heavy cannon than all 
England did the first year of this war. 

They have sent 17,000,900 tons of ammu- 
nition to the front. Their shells are roaring 
on Q.Ye battle fronts in three continents. 
"When the British boys thrust their huge 
shells into the cannon these boys literally re- 
ceive the shells at the hands of the millions of 
English girls who are passing them forward. 

Wonderful the heroism of the British sol- 
diers ! The reason why the men fight well 
at the front is because there are women at 
home worth fighting for. In all ages battles 
have been won, partly by the strong arm of 
the soldier, but chiefly by the heart that 
nerves the arm. That is why John Euskin 
once said that " the woman in the rear gen- 
erally wins the victory at the front." 
146 



British vs. American Girls 

It stirs one's sense of wonder to find that 
all classes and all social conditions are repre- 
sented in these factories. Thousands of 
young school-teachers have left the school- 
room behind, closed the book and desk and 
gone to the factory. Tens of thousands of 
young wives and mothers have left their 
little children with the grandmother. Many 
rectors and clergymen and priests, unfit for 
service at the front by reason of age, work 
all day long in the munition factory. Many 
a professional man crowds his work in the 
office that he may reach the factory for at 
least a few hours' work upon shot and shell. 

One day in France, as I was entering the 
factory, I saw perhaps twenty young women 
come out, hurry across the street to a build- 
ing where two old crippled soldiers were 
taking care of the little children. These 
young mothers nursed their babes, looked 
after the other children and then hurried 
back to the factory. Every minute was 
precious ; every day was big with destiny. 
Their young husbands and brothers and 
lovers, when the German push came, must 
have their cartridges and shells ready and in 
abundance. 

Watching these women with their strained, 
147 



Our British Allies 

anxious faces — women who cut each thread 
in the shell with the accuracy of the expert 
— you could see the lips of the woman mur- 
muring, and needed no confession from her 
that she was silently praying for the man 
who would use this weapon to defend her 
beloved France, her aged mother and her 
little child. 

When the beast is slain and the Potsdam 
gang tried and executed for their crimes, 
and the boys come home with trumpets and 
banners, the ovations will be for the sol- 
diers ; but after the soldiers have had their 
parade and their honour and their ovation 
on the first day of the triumph, there should 
be a second great parade, in which, while 
the soldiers stand on the streets and observe, 
and the merchants and working men and the 
professional classes stand as spectators, down 
the street shall march the munition girls, 
who fashioned the weapons with which the 
soldiers slew the common enemy. 

For while the boys at the front have de- 
fended liberty the girls at home have armed 
the soldiers. ISTeither one without the other 
could have made the world safe for democ- 
racy. 

Through the imagination these women 
148 



British vs. American Girls 

have a right, while they toil, to watch the 
shell complete their work. The smith who 
forges the chain for the ship's anchor has a 
right to exult when he looks out through his 
imagination upon the great boat held firm by 
his chain in the hour when the storm threat- 
ened to hurl the craft upon the rocks. The 
inventor has a right to say : " That granary 
full of wheat is mine; I invented the 
reaper." The physician has a right to re- 
joice over the battle and victory over the 
youth whose life was saved by the surgeon's 
skill. Not otherwise, the munition girl has 
a right when the long day of battle is over 
to say : " I safeguarded that cottage ; I 
lifted a shield above that little child ; I 
built a wall against the cathedral and the 
gallery and the homes of yonder city." 

For American girls of vision there is noth- 
ing that they so much desire as the im- 
mediate condemnation by our Government 
of 10,000 luxury- producing plants in this 
country, which should immediately be taken 
over by our Government for munition pur- 
poses, and before the daybreak of the first 
morning there would be ten million Ameri- 
can girls standing before the doors, trying to 
break their way in to obtain a chance to 
149 



Our British Allies 

fashion the shells that would protect Amer- 
ican boys in danger at the front. 



5. The Wolves^ Den on Vimy Ridge 

The bloodiest battle of 1917 was fought 
on the slopes of Yimy Kidge. That ridge is 
seven and a half miles long and is shaped 
like a dog's hind leg. Lifted up to an eleva- 
tion of several hundred feet, the hill not 
only commands an outlook upon the German 
lines eastward, but protects the great plains 
that slope westward towards the English 
Channel. 

To hold that ridge the Germans con- 
structed a vast system of trenches, barbed 
wire barriers, Portland cement pill-boxes 
and underneath the ridge, at a depth of sixty 
feet, they made their prisoners dig a gallery 
seven and a half miles long, with rooms for 
the officers opening out on either side of the 
long passageways. 

One morning the Canadian troops started 
up the long sloping hillside, under skies that 
rained cartridges, shells and gas bombs. So 
terrific was the machine-gun fire that some 
cartridges cut trees in two as if they had 
been cut with a saw, while others did not so 
150 



The Wolves' Den on Vimy Ridge 

much strike the Canadian boys as cut their 
bodies into two parts. 

Lying upon their faces they crawled up 
the hillside, cutting the wires as they crept 
forward. JSTot until the second afternoon 
did the shattered remnants reach the Ger- 
man trench that crowned the hillcrest. Then 
they plunged down into the trench, while 
the Germans rushed down the long stairs 
into the underground chamber and fled 
through the lower openings of their long 
gallery northward towards safety. 

Not until the Canadian officers led us into 
one of those German chambers did we un- 
derstand the black tragedy. The room was 
shell-proof. The soft yellow clay was shored 
up by rough boards. All around the walls 
were bunks. In that chamber the German 
officers had kept the captive French and 
Belgian girls. There were two cupboards 
standing against the wall. One was made 
of rough boards; the other was a large, 
exquisitely carved walnut bureau for girls' 
garments. When the German officers fled 
from the trench above they had just time to 
escape to the lower shell-proof rooms, grab 
some of the treasure and flee. Unwilling 
to give these captive girls their freedom, 
151 



Our British Allies 

since they could not have the girls they de- 
termined that their French and Belgian fa- 
thers and sweethearts should not recover 
them. 

There was just time during the excitement 
of the flight to unlock the door, rush in and 
send a bullet through each young woman. 
A few minutes later the Canadian boys 
swarmed through the long connecting 
chambers and side rooms. 

In one of those rooms they found these 
young women now dead or dying. Gas 
bombs had already been flung down and 
the rooms were foul with poisoned air. Pro- 
tected by their masks the Canadian boys 
had time to pick up these girls and carry 
them up the steps into the open air, where 
they laid them down on the grass in the 
open sunshine. But help came too late. 
Beginning with an attempt to murder the 
souls of the girls the German officers had 
ended by slaying their bodies. 

An oSicer saw to it that the official 
photographer kept the record of the faces of 
these dead girls. Once they must have been 
divinely beautiful, for all were lovely be- 
yond the average. One could understand 
the pride and joy of a father or lover when 
152 



The Wolves' Den on Vimy Ridge 

he looked upon the young girl's face. The 
slender body made one think of the tall lily 
stem, crowned with that flower named the face 
and glorious head. Strangely enough they 
seemed to sleep as if peace had come, after 
long pain. Plainly death had been longed for. 

Weeks passed by. The photographs of 
the dead girls were shown in the hope that 
if possible word might reach their parents, 
but no friend had been found to recognize 
them. One day a Canadian officer, making 
slow recovery in a hospital near the coast, 
was asked by his nurse for the photograph. 

It seemed there was a Belgian woman 
working in the hospital. Her village had 
been entirely'' destroyed. Her home was 
gone and all whom she loved had disap- 
peared. By some accident the Ked Cross 
nurse remembered this photograph and de- 
cided to show it to the Belgian woman who 
had passed so swiftly from abundance and 
happiness to the utmost of poverty and 
heart-break. Almost unwillingly at first the 
woman looked at the print. A moment 
later she held the picture out at arm's 
length, rose to her feet, then drew it to her 
lips and hugged it to her breast. 

With streaming eyes she almost shouted, 
153 



Our British Allies 

" Thank God ! Julia is dead ! Thank God ! 
Julia is dead ! Now I know there is a God 
in Israel, for Julia is dead, is dead — is dead ! 
Thank God ! Thank God ! " 

Though for a long time the doves had 
been in the clutches of the German hawks ; 
though for a long time the lambs had been 
in the jaws of the German wolves ; when all 
else failed death came and released the lovely 
girls from the clutch of German assassins. 



6. " Why Did You Leave Us in Hell 
for Two Years ? " 

For British soldiers it had been a long 
trying day on Messines Kidge. For many 
nights the boys had been coming up towards 
the front trenches. The next morning at 
3 : 50 they were to go " over the top " ; a 
feat which they accomplished, driving in a 
mile and a half deep, on a long, long line, 
only to be stopped by four days and nights 
of rain that drowned the trenches and drove 
them back out of the flooded valley to the 
hillside. Because the Germans knew what 
must come the next day, the German cannon 
were trying to bomb out the British guns. 

That night — tired out — we drove back 
154 



'' Why Did You Leave Us in Hell? " 

eighteen miles behind the line for one good 
night's sleep. After dinner an English lieu- 
tenant told me this tragic tale : 

*' It was an April night last spring. All 
day the wind and fog and rain had been 
coming in from the North Sea. The chill 
and damp went into the very marrow of the 
bones. When night fell a few of us officers 
crept down the long stair into a shell-proof 
room. There we had our pipes and gossiped 
about the events of the day and talked 
with the French captain, our guest, who was 
spending a week studying our sector. Finally 
the time came when we must go back into 
the trench to take our turn in the rain. 

" We were putting on our raincoats, when 
in my happiness I said, ^Well, men, you 
should congratulate me. One week from 
to-night I shall not be here in this rain and 
mud. I shall be home in England and have 
my little wife and my baby girl. Just one 
week ! It seems like seven eternities instead 
of seven days and nights ! ' 

" I little dreamed the little tragedy that I 
had precipitated. My colonel was very kind. 
He told me that he would have his per- 
mission in three more months. The rest of 
the boys also said nice things. Suddenly we 
155 



Our British Allies 

realized that the French captain was act- 
ing very strangely and saying excited things 
with his back towards us. We did not 
know how we had insulted him, nor could 
we understand what had happened. Finally 
my colonel said to him : 

"'Captain, I hope you will have your 
vacation soon and have a chance to go home 
and see your family.' 

" He turned on us like a crazy man. He 
put his fists in the air, he half shouted and 
half sobbed at us. 

"'How do you men dare talk to me 
about going home ? Your land has never 
been invaded, nor your families ruined. 
Home! How can I go home? The Ger- 
mans have had my town for a year. In 
their retreat they carried away my little girl 
and my young wife, and now the priest has 
gotten word to me that in six weeks my little 
girl and my young wife will both have babes 
by the German beast vrho carried them off.' 

"And then the Frenchman cursed God 
and cursed the devil ! Cursed the Kaiser 
and cursed the Fatherland. Oh, it was so 
terrible. Doctor, I often wonder how Amer- 
icans could have left the women and girls of 
Belgium and France in hell for two and a 
156 



** War Will End Within Forty Years " 

half years, while you men stood in safety 
and in peace." 

The historian will find it hard to answer 
that question. History will have it to say 
that England was the good Samaritan who 
helped the Belgians who had fallen among 
thieves, while Americans Avere among those 
who passed by on the other side. 



7. " This War Will End Within Forty 
Years '' 

A New Zealand officer was giving direc- 
tions to a group of his soldiers. They were 
in the field at the foot of Bapaume. The 
immediate task was that of cutting and roll- 
ing up the barbed wire. In that territory the 
Germans had left trenches foul with fever, 
wells filled with the corpses of men and 
horses, springs polluted with every form of 
filth, but worst of all, the barbed wire en- 
tanglements. Every sharp point was covered 
with rust and threatened lockjaw. Looking 
in every direction, the whole land was 
yellow with the barbed wire. The work 
was dangerous. The rebound of the wire 
threatened the eye with its vision, threatened 
the face and the hand, and all the soldiers 
157 



Our British Allies 

were in a mood of rebellion. In an angry- 
mood, the officer exclaimed, "There are a 
hundred million miles of German barbed 
wire in France ! " 

And when later I asked the first lieutenant 
how long this war would last, he made the 
instant answer, " This war will continue forty 
years more ! One year for the fighting, and 
thirty-nine years to roll up the wire." 

Because every soldier at the front hated 
the wire entanglements, that bright sentence 
ran up and down the entire line from Bel- 
gium to the Swiss frontier. And for men 
of experience there is more truth in the 
statement than one would at first blush 
think. It will take one more year for the 
fighting, but it will take thirty-nine years 
more to grow the shade trees. Five cen- 
turies ago the French began to develop the 
love of the beautiful. On either side of the 
roads running across the land they planted 
two rows of poplars, oaks or elms. When 
long time had passed the fame of the French 
roads and the shade trees went out into all 
the earth. Under these trees the French 
farmer stopped his cart, fed his horses and 
refreshed himself beneath the shade. Under 
these trees the old men at the end of their 
158 



" War Will End Within Forty Years " 

career rested themselves, and gossiped about 
old friends that had gone. 

And when the German found he could not 
hold the land and enjoy the shade trees, the 
splendid orchards, the purple vineyards, he 
determined that the Frenchman should not 
have them, and so he lifted the axe upon 
every peach and pear, plum and grape, 
cherry and gooseberry tree. Perhaps it was 
as black a crime to murder the land as it was 
to murder the bodies of the farmers, since 
the soul is immortal. 

" One more year of fightmg and thirty- 
nine years " not to roll up the wire, but to 
rebuild the cathedrals and churches, the 
colleges and universities, the halls of science, 
the temples of art, the mills for the weaving 
of cotton and linen and wool, and above all 
for the rebuilding of the railways, the re- 
construction of the canals and the bridges, 
great and small. But the most grievous loss 
is the human loss. Think of 1,500,000 
crippled heroes and poor wounded invalids 
in the land of France alone ! Think of an- 
other 1,500,000 young widows, or lovers 
and mothers ! Gone the young men who 
promised so great things for the French 
essay, the French poem, for the paintings 
159 



Our British Allies 

and the bronzes ! Dead the young lawyers, 
physicians and educators ! Gone the young 
farmers and husbandmen ! Perished 1,000,- 
000 old people and 600,000 little children, 
all dead of heart-break. The German beast 
has been in the land. Like a wolf leaping 
into the sheepfold to tear the throats of the 
young lambs and the mother ewes. 

What ! Thirty -nine years more to recover 
ruined France and Belgium, Poland and 
Kumania ? France will never be the same 
again. The scar of the beast will abide. 
That is why no man of large mind and 
great heart will ever make friends with a 
soldier from Germany, will ever buy an 
article of German stamp, so long as he lives, 
will ever read another German book, or 
support another German business. It is our 
duty to forgive the transgressor who is 
repentant, but it is a crime to forget the un- 
speakable atrocities, the devilish cruelties of 
the German Kaiser, the German War Staff 
and the German army, with its 10,000,000 
criminals. 

8. " Why Are We Outmanned by the 
Germans?" 
Many thoughtful men have lingered long 
i6o 



*' Why Are We Outmanned ? '' 

over the despatches announcing that Great 
Britain called thirty thousand farmers to the 
trenches, thus threatening the loss of a part 
of her harvest. One of the British editors 
and statesmen explains this event by the 
frank statement that for the moment the 
Allies are outmanned, and will be until 
another million Americans reach France. 
Many men are puzzled to understand what 
this means, but the explanation is very 
simple. The combined population of Ger- 
many, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria is not 
far from 140,000,000. To this must be 
added seventy millions of conquered and im- 
pressed peoples of Belgium, Poland, Eu- 
mania, with the Baltic provinces of Eussia, 
Ukraine and other regions. Over against 
this population stands the 125,000,000 living 
in Great Britain, France, Italy, Canada, 
Australia, New Zealand and the English 
people of South Africa, and India, and the 
Isles of the Sea. Concede, therefore, that 
the army of six millions of Allies are over 
against six millions of Germans. Why are 
we outmanned ? 

Back of that British editor-statesman's 
statement lies a most dramatic fact. Our 
Allies keep their treaties, and will not use 
i6i 



Our British Allies 

German prisoners to light against their broth- 
ers. Therefore the six million of Allies' sol- 
diers have no support behind them. But 
the Germans impress all conquered peoples 
and lifted into the air if the observer had a 
glass powerful enough, he would behold 
back of the German six millions another six 
millions of impressed prisoners and con- 
quered peoples, who support the German 
army. These men, driven forward by an 
automatic pistol and the rifle, work within 
half a mile of the rear German trench. 
They dig ditches, fill shell holes, repair 
roads, bring up burdens, care for the horses, 
scrub the mud from the wagons, and the 
slightest neglect of the task means that they 
are shot down by the German guards. All 
this releases the German soldier from the 
deadly work that breaks the nerve, and un- 
fits a man to go over the top. That means 
that the German soldier can fight eight 
hours, and have sixteen for rest and recrea- 
tion. 

But over against this German army fight- 
ing eight hours, with the deadly work 
wrought by several million of impressed 
servants and slaves, stands the Allied army. 
But our men after eight hours of active serv- 
162 



" Why Are We Outmanned ? " 

ice must then begin to dig ditches, fill shell 
holes, repair bridges, clean the mud from 
the wagons, bring up the munitions, and 
this deadly work for eight hours, added to 
their eight hours of active service, means 
only eight hours for sleep and recovery, 
while the German has sixteen hours off duty 
for recovery and sleep. The Allies keep 
their treaties, and do not ask a German 
prisoner to fight against his brother. The 
Allies obey the laws of right and wrong, 
but the Ten Commandments are a great 
handicap in time of war. Is there any one 
who supposes that six million of Allied sol- 
diers, working sixteen hours a day, are as 
fresh and as fit as six million Germans, 
working only eight hours a day ? That is 
why the situation is so perilous. Fortu- 
nately victories are not won by muscle with- 
out but by the soul within. The sense of 
justice in the heart lends a form of omnipo- 
tence to a youth. In a moral universe, 
therefore, we must win. The great problem 
is, how to carry on until we can get another 
million Americans across to France, with full 
equipment, and fifty thousand aeroplanes. 



163 



"OVER HERE" 



VI 



1. The Redemption of a Slacker 

OUT on the Ohio River there is a large 
steel town. During the last few years 
many foreigners who have the Bolsheviki 
spirit have crossed the ocean and found work 
in the great shops and factories. Little by 
little the foreign newspapers have devel- 
oped the spirit that has now ruined Russia, 
and is here under the American name of the 
I. W. W. movement. In this steel city was 
an anarchist, with real power to move the 
mobs. The mere mention of the name of 
Carnegie or Rockefeller was to him like 
waving a red flag in the face of a bull. In 
the evenings it was his custom to climb 
upon a box at the corner of the street, close 
to a little park, and tell his hearers that all 
the wealth in the rich man's house was 
created by the workman's muscle. He made 
no allowance for the inventor, for the organ- 
izer, for the risks taken by the man who 
164 



The Redemption of a Slacker 

built a factory. A few weeks ago this an- 
archist laid down a newspaper, containing an 
account of the trial of the I. W. "W. leaders 
in Chicago. That night, becoming alarmed, 
lest he himself be caught in the drag-net, and 
perhaps forced to enlist as an enemy alien, 
this agitator disappeared, leaving behind him 
his board bill, laundry bill, tailor's bill, not 
to mention many other forms of indebted- 
ness — a disappearance that led every one of 
his creditors to give up any and all faith in 
the American Bolsheviki movement. 

l^ow there was a young boy of about 
twenty-three who had long been listening to 
this agitator. When, therefore, the second 
night after the anarchist's disappearance 
came, this young man, who aspired himself 
to be a leader of the mob, climbed up on the 
soap box, at the corner of the little park, and 
began to speak to the same old crowd. 

" Think of it, my friends ! Just think of 
it ! Think of some soldier coming in here and 
making me enlist ! I have no grudge against 
the Germans. I don't want to kill them. My 
forefathers were all German ! My name is 
German. And I am an American all right, 
all right! Still, I don't propose to have 
anybody tell me what I must do. If I want 
165 



" Over Here " 

to enlist, I will enlist, and if I don't, I won't ! 
I'd like to see some Government agent come 
along and grab me for the draft ! When he 
comes, he'll hear a few things from me, and 
then some ! " 

At that point a man lifted up his hand 
and said : " jSTow you may stop right there ! " 
Throwing back his coat collar, he showed a 
little metal badge. Climbing up on the box, 
the stranger took the young anarchist by his 
shoulder and half choked him, saying : " So 
you want to have the people see some one 
take you to the draft office? "Well," said 
the officer, " novv's the time for them to see 
him, and I'm the man. And you people," 
he went on, " just take a good look at this 
fellow. It'll be the last chance you're going 
to have, for he will be in jail to-night, and 
to-morrow we will decide whether or not he 
has been opposing the draft. If he has, he 
stands a good chance of being shot." Blow- 
ing a little whistle, the officer dragged the 
young anarchist to the edge of the street, 
half lifted and half kicked him into the 
police wagon, which soon disappeared. The 
enemy aliens who remained behind were 
stupefied, partly with astonishment and 
partly with terror. Aliens began to say, 
1 66 



The Redemption of a Slacker 

"What will come next?" That night a 
number more of pro-Germans disappeared 
from this town with its steel mills. 

The next morning, at ten o'clock, the offi- 
cer entered the jail. " Get a move on you, 
young man ! " he said brusquely. " You're 
going up to the court to be examined to see 
whether you are a slacker or a traitor. In 
the one case you will be interned and in the 
other case you will be hanged or shot." 

The young anarchist was on his feet in a 
moment. " But, officer, aren't you going to 
give me a chance to enlist ? " 

"Young man, this Government does not 
want traitors to enlist, nor pro-Germans." 

"I am not a pro-German this morning," 
cried the excited man. "I have thought 
the whole thing over last night. I did not 
sleep a wink. I think this Government is 
the best government in the world. And I 
am willing to fight for it." 

The officer was astounded. "Well, my 
young enemy," he exclaimed, "a dungeon 
seems to have had a good effect upon your 
mind. What has regenerated you ? Was it 
the cold water or the corn bread ? Or the 
steel door before your dungeon ? Or was it 
the bad air in your cell ? Or possibly it was 
167 



" Over Here '' 

the fear of death, or God Almighty, or future 
punishment. Come now, out with it ! " 

It was a thoroughly frightened boy who 
stood half an hour later in the prisoner's 
dock. " Give me some book on the Gov- 
ernment of the United States," he exclaimed 
to the judge. " And give me a week in which 
to show that I am in earnest, and I will 
then volunteer." The judge w^as very grave. 
" Young man," he said sternly, " any boy 
that will eat the bread of the United States, 
that will enjoy the liberty of this country, 
and has had all the chances to climb to 
place that have come to you, and refuses to 
enlist, has something wrong with him, and 
it is only a question of time when he comes 
to the judgment day." To this the young 
man made the answer that he had been lazy, 
careless and ignorant ; that he had allowed 
himself to become the tool of the runaway 
agitator, and then once more he asked that 
he might have a chance to enlist. With the 
help of friends, the judge and the draft 
board finally let him off and sent him to a 
camp for three months' intensive training. 
Then came the news that his company had 
been sent over seas, and within a short time 
thereafter in the list of casualties the name 
1 68 



Slackers versus Heroes 

of this young foreigner appeared. But one 
letter reached this country, and that letter 
was notable for this sentence : " For the first 
time in my life I have had young Americans 
for my companions. The boys in my com- 
pany have had a college education and they 
have taught me bravery, truth, self-sacrifice, 
kindness and chivalry. I have learned more 
in two months at the camp than in all the 
rest of my life put together. The com- 
panionship in my company and in my camp 
have saved my soul." It is this that ex- 
plains the redemption of the slacker. 

2. Slackers versus Heroes 
Going through the long communication 
trench, between the ruined city of Kheims 
and an observation lookout, with its view of 
the German front trench, we passed several 
soldiers digging an opening in the soft white 
marl, into a parallel trench. The captain 
in charge called my attention to a French 
poilu. His hair was quite black, save for 
the half inch next to the scalp and that was 
white as snow. If one had lifted up his hair 
and estimated his age by the last two inches 
of the jet locks the poilu would have been 
169 



" Over Here " 

about thirty-five, but the hair, pure white at 
the roots, and a glance at his face told us 
that he was fifty-five to sixty. 

" He passed inspection," said the captain, 
" by dyeing his hair, and several weeks ago 
he broke the bottle of dye. ]^ow he is half 
scared to death for fear he will be thrown 
out, because he is at the beginning of old 
age. Still I have no better soldier, no 
stronger, braver man. But I am hoping 
much from a friend in Epernay, to whom I 
sent for a bottle of black hair dye." 

So long as the Frenchmen have that 
spirit France will never be defeated. 

Many weeks ago I was in a manufacturing 
town near Pittsburgh. The wind was sharp 
and chill. All overcoats were turned up 
at the collar. On a box stood a young 
Australian lieutenant. His cheeks held 
two fiery spots. He was telling the story 
of the second battle of Ypres. While he 
talked you walked with him the streets of 
the doomed city, you heard the crash of the 
great shells as they smashed through the 
public buildings ; you witnessed the burning 
of the Cloth Hall and shivered as the noble 
structure fell. One laughed with him in his 
moments of humour and wept over the 
170 



Slackers versus Heroes 

sorrows of the refugees. He pleaded with 
the Welshmen and the Cornishmen, and told 
them that the motherland was bleeding to 
death and that now every boy counted. He 
flogged his hearers, scoffed at them, praised 
them, wept, laughed, reviled, transformed 
and finally conquered them. 

At the close, shaking hands with him, lo ! 
he was burning with fever, with skin hot 
and dry. " Lieutenant, you should be at the 
hotel, in bed. You will kill yourself speak- 
ing in this cold air." 

" Well," he answered, " there are plenty 
of our boys who are perfectly sound who 
will be killed inside of three months. I have 
the t. b., (tuberculosis), but I believe that 
I can pull through a year. I have enlisted 
over one hundred coal miners from Wales 
and iron-workers from Cornwall. I am will- 
ing to die for the motherland, after a 
year of t. b., since my pals will be dead 
within three months through bullets. And 
when I die I want to die with the conscious- 
ness that I have kept my manhood." 

I left that poor, wounded, half-dead 
young soldier with the feeling that I had 
been in the presence of a superior being. 

Over against these heroes stand the 
171 



" Over Here " 

slackers. There are hundreds and thou- 
sands of young men from allied countries 
who are of draft age, who find refuge in this 
land. There are other thousands who have 
been exempted, one because he has a flat in- 
step, another because he has had trouble with 
his eyes or his teeth ; or has tuberculosis, in 
its initial form, or is a victim of bronchitis. 
Most of these men owe it to their country 
and themselves to tear up their exemption 
papers. They earn their living in this coun- 
try, working ten hours a day, but they will 
not work six or eight hours a day for Old 
England, thus releasing some young man to 
go to the front. 

The question is not whether the youth has 
an exemption paper. The heart of the ques- 
tion is. Has he any moral right to accept an 
exemption? This war is being fought by 
untold thousands of soldiers who could ob- 
tain half a dozen exemptions. They prefer 
to run the risk of death in six months, to 
looking after their own hides and keeping 
well away from danger for the next six 
years or sixty. JSTo one who has been in the 
coal regions or in the great mines of the 
Kocky Mountains but realizes that there are 
an enormous number of allied slackers in 
172 



German Stupidity in Avoiding the Draft 

this country. They have left their country 
to its dire peril at a moment when Old Eng- 
land is bleeding to death — when every man 
counts and when the cripples, the invalids, 
the old men, the women, everybody who can 
give four hours or eight of work a day 
should enter the great war offices or com- 
missary departments and do office work, and 
thus release the stronger men for their work 
at the front. 

The time has fully come when Americans 
should ask themselves the question whether 
or not they have a moral right to support 
with money that could be far better used, in 
the war stamp purchases or Eed Cross work, 
all these slackers and cowards, at a time when 
the motherland asks them to throw away 
their exemption papers, in an hour when 
civilization, liberty and humanity are treas- 
ures trembling in the balance. 



3. German Stupidity in Avoiding the 
Draft 
Following the revolution of 1848 in Ger- 
many, multitudes of people fled from Prussia 
and Bavaria, and these fugitives, settling in 
the United States, organized colonies that 
173 



" Over Here " 

grew until there were often one hundred 
families in a single community. Strangely 
enough, as the years went on, these Germans 
forgot the iron yoke they once had borne, 
until, when many years had passed by, it 
came about that time and distance lent a 
glamour to the landscape of the far-off 
Fatherland. Occasional letters from their 
relatives kept them in touch with the old 
German home. At last they quite forgot 
the militarism, the poverty, the cruel limita- 
tions and the hypocrisy of Germany. Fa- 
miliarity also with the institutions of the 
Eepublic bred a kind of contempt. Through 
the imagination Germany became an en- 
chanted land. When, therefore, war was 
declared these Germ an- Americans came to- 
gether in their clubs, beer gardens and Ger- 
man churches, to pledge unswerving fealty 
to the Kaiser and to the militarism from 
which once they had fled as from death 
itself. 

Last summer brought the Government 
draft to the young men of one of these Ger- 
man colonies. The week was approaching 
when the German boys must have their 
physical examination. American officers, 
American physicians and the members of the 
174 



German Stupidity in Avoiding the Draft 

draft board were already in session in a cer- 
tain town. One Sunday a German- American 
physician appeared in that community. 
That night some twenty or more young Ger- 
man-Americans met that physician. He 
told them plainly how deeply he sympa- 
thized with their unwillingness to turn their 
guns against their own German cousins and 
relatives in the Fatherland. Out of pity and 
compassion had been born his plan to save 
their limbs and perhaps their lives, and also 
to serve the Fatherland and the beloved 
Kaiser. " I have here," said the physician, 
" a certain heart depressant. It will slow 
your heart like the brake on an automobile. 
It is a simple coal-oil product. It is quite 
harmless. It was made by the well-known 
German firm of Baer & Company, chemists, 
and it is so cheap. I shall see to it that you 
are rejected for the draft. And — think of 
it ! — only twenty- five dollars ! For that 
little sum I will keep you from being 
wounded or killed. You will each one give 
me twenty -five dollars ; then I will give you 
this bottle, holding five grains for Monday, 
ten grains for Tuesday, fifteen grains for 
Wednesday, twenty grains for Thursday, 
twenty-five grains for Friday, and on Satur- 

i;5 



" Over Here " 

day you will be rejected." Ten minutes 
later the necromancer had juggled twenty- 
five dollars out of the pocket of each newly 
drafted boy and into his own right-hand 
pocket. 

On Saturday these young men appeared 
before the draft board and the Government 
physicians. All the boys were in a dreadful 
condition nervously. Now the heart would 
drop to forty, and then at the slightest exer- 
tion run up to two hundred and twenty. All 
were dizzy, nauseated, yellow and green, 
feverish. But the Secret Service men knew 
every detail of what had taken place, and all 
the facts were in the hands of the draft 
board. A certain farmer's son, young Hein- 

rich H , was first examined. The United 

States physician counted a pulse that varied 
from forty to two hundred and twenty. The 
physician kept his face perfectly straight. 
'' Marvellous heart ! Kegular as a clock ! 
Strong as the throbbing of a locomotive. 
Seventy-two exactly ! Absolutely normal. 
I congratulate you, young men, upon your 
fine heart action. A man is as old as his 
heart engine. A boy with a heart like yours 
ought to live to be a hundred years old. All 
you need is a change of climate. France 
176 



** Vm Working Now for Uncle Sam " 

will do the world for you. You may need a 
little heart stimulant, but I think that noth- 
ing hastens the pulse beat like a few rifle 
balls and bomb shells from Hindenburg." 
He sent every one of the twenty boys into 
the service, but separated them, one going 
to Camp Ayer, in Massachusetts ; one to 
Camp Bliss, in El Paso, Texas, and the rest 
to camps in States between. In one Middle 
West community a German father and son 
went so far as to deaden pain through co- 
caine and then cut off the finger of the right 
hand. It is generally understood that both 
the father and son are now in two widely 
separated penitentiaries, reflecting each in 
his own cell upon the folly of treason and 
the crime of becoming a traitor to the kind- 
est and best Government that has ever been 
organized upon our earth. 



4. " I'm Working Now for Uncle 
Sam" 

The long transatlantic train came to a 
dead stop at the division station in that 
great Southwestern State, where one was 
surrounded by sage-brush, the sand, the dis- 
tant foot-hills and the far-ofi" mountain range. 
177 



" Over Here " 

One of the Pullman cars showed signs of 
a hot box, and a moment later the wheel 
burst into a mass of flame. In the thirty- 
minutes' wait for repairs I made my way 
into the room where the conductors, engi- 
neers and firemen met. On a little table I 
found a copy of the address given before the 
railroad men of El Paso, Texas, by Secretary 
McAdoo. 

I called the attention of the different men 
to the address, to the clarity of the reason- 
ing, the simplicity of the argument, the 
strength of the appeal and the glowing 
patriotism that filled all the pages. The 
pamphlet had been worn by much reading. 
It was covered with the black finger prints 
of busy men who had been working around 
the locomotives and tenders. 

Plainly Mr. McAdoo's speech had made 
a profound impression upon these em- 
ployees. Having first of all called the 
attention of the large group of men to the 
creative work of Alexander Hamilton, the 
first Secretary of the Treasury, who struck, 
as Daniel Webster said, "the dry rock of 
national credit and abundant streams of 
revenue gushed forth," I asked these men 
whether there had been in one hundred and 
178 



" Vm Working Now for Uncle Sam " 

twenty-five years any forward movement in 
finance that was comparable to the benefits 
derived from the national reserve bank law, 
under Secretary McAdoo, a law that not only 
had prevented a panic in this country during 
this war, but had raised more billions within 
four years than the total cost of the Govern- 
ment in the first century of our existence. 

Late that afternoon, on the train, the con- 
ductor sought me out. In the midst of the 
discussion he drew out a roll of bills. He 
told me that in those mountain towns many 
of the ranchers did not buy their tickets at 
the stations. 

To use his expression, " They had it in for 
the railroads." " They pay me their fare in 
cash, and when I give them the receipt they 
tear up the receipt and wink at me. I al- 
ways feel," he said, " like resenting these 
actions, because I know that they are incite- 
ments to petty theft, but now," he said, " I 
have my chance. I always tell them," said 
the conductor, " that money belongs to 
Uncle Sam. He runs this railroad, Uncle 
Sam takes this money. 

" With it he will buy guns for the Ameri- 
can boys at the front and build ships to 
carry food that will feed these soldiers. I 
179 



" Over Here " 

would rather lose that right arm than take 
one penny of money that belongs to Uncle 
Sam. This is my job to run this train. I 
tell my crew every day that we must make 
the coal produce every possible pound of 
steam, that every waste must be saved, and 
every pound of energy used and that we must 
run this train so as to help win this war." 

From morning till night I found that con- 
ductor was preaching that sentimeut. His 
words were directly traceable to the words 
of Secretary McAdoo at El Paso, Texas, 
That single speech transformed these men. 

Measured by the results — truth that trans- 
forms life and changes conduct and character 
— that was a truly great speech. We must 
all hope much from this new sense of devo- 
tion to the interests of Uncle Sam. 

5. The German Farmer's Debt to the 
United States 

There are literally thousands of small 
German colonies in different parts of this 
country. In one far distant State is a com- 
munity settled by about two hundred Ger- 
man families, who took up the land im- 
mediately after the Civil War. 

By some good fortune they settled in 
180 



The Germ-an Farmer's Debt 

what is now one of the very richest sections 
in the IJnited States. Land that they bought 
for ;^1.25 an acre is now worth $260 an acre. 
In that community there are two German 
churches. 

Both pastors came from Germany, both 
were educated in German colleges, both read 
German newspapers and both insist upon 
carrying on a colloquial German school, 
with German teachers, German text-books 
and German standards. 

Little pressure was brought to bear upon 
these farmers during the First Liberty Loan. 
By many devices they succeeded in getting 
their boys aAvay before the draft registra- 
tion. While it was never proved technically 
that they had all pledged themselves not to 
oppose Germany, morally this is known to 
be the fact. 

October of 1917 came and the Second 
Liberty Loan was on. One day all these 
farmers received a printed card, saying there 
would be a meeting on Monday night, in 
connection with the Second Liberty Loan. 
"I find you made no subscription whatso- 
ever to the First Liberty Loan. There are 
reasons why I think it best for me to advise 
you to attend this meeting." 
i8i 



" Over Here '' 

Every German farmer read that card 
several times. Who was this stranger who 
was coming into the community ? Was he 
a Secret Service man ? How did he find out 
that there had been a secret meeting of the 
Germans immediately after war had been de- 
clared against Germany? Each farmer began 
to ask himself : " Has any one quoted me ? " 
Each one decided to attend that meeting. 

The meeting began at precisely seven 
o'clock. Only one man who had received 
the notice was absent, and his son brought a 
message concerning his father's absence. 
The stranger arose in his place, but left it 
uncertain as to whether he was a Secret 
Service man, a banker or a patriot interested 
in his country. He began with substantially 
these words : 

"Men, you are all German- Americans. 
I find that not one of you subscribed to the 
First Liberty Loan. You came to this 
country poor men. This Government sold 
you Government land for from a dollar and 
a quarter to two dollars and a half an acre. 
But you seem to have forgotten one thing. 
Your title deed to your farm rests upon your 
loyalty as citizens of the Republic. When- 
ever you refuse to support the people of the 
182 



The German Farmer^s Debt 

Kepublic you have by your own act annulled 
the title deed of your land. 

"If you refuse to support your Govern- 
ment in this war, you are a traitor, and 
when this is proved you will be shot. If 
secretly you have been sending money to 
the Kaiser to buy guns with which to kill 
American boys you have forfeited the title 
deed to your farm. Your property has be- 
come again the possession of the Government 
and people of the United States." 

By this time these farmers had their 
mouths open, and their faces became tense 
and alarmed. When his words had had 
time to sink in, the stranger went on : "I 
have here a statement as to the number of 
acres in each farm owned by each man in 
this room. The first man's name is Hein- 

rich ; you own 320 acres of land. It 

is worth at least ^^75,000. There is no 
mortgage on this farm. Heinrich, I think 
you had better buy ;^2,500 worth of Liberty 
Bonds. I am simply advising with you as a 
friend. I have made out an application for 
you, and all you have to do is to sign it. 

" My advice to every one of you is that 
you buy from three to five per cent, of the 
value of your farm. I want to say inciden- 
183 



'' Over Here '* 

tally that I trust that there will never again 
be held a secret meeting of the Germans in 
this room to discuss the best way to avoid 
supporting the United States Government in 
this war against Germany, and how you can 
best help the Kaiser." 

That little sentence worked like magic. 
Every farmer in the room rose to his feet in 
his anxiety to rush forward to the table. 
Men literally struggled to see who should 
sign up first. Their enthusiasm for the 
United States Government was as boundless 
as it was sudden in its manifestation. 

Remember that there were only two hun- 
dred farmers in the room. And yet there 
are the best of reasons for believing that the 
men in that room bought that night nearly 
;^200,000 worth of Liberty Bonds. 

6. '** Sharper Than a Serpent^s Tooth " Is 
an Ungrateful Immigrant 

One of the things that no patriot can ever 
understand is the ingratitude of the Germans 
who fled from the Fatherland to escape Ger- 
man militarism and autocracy. 

Lecturing in a Western State, I met a 
banker who had returned from a school- 
house in a rural district where he had been 
184 



*' Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth " 

talking about the Liberty Bonds to a Ger- 
man audience. One old German refused to 
attend this meeting. He was very bitter in 
his attacks upon our Government. He had 
made no subscription to the first two Liberty 
Loans; he had refused to help in the cam- 
paign for the Red Cross Fund ; he insisted 
that he paid his taxes and that was all that 
the Government had any right to demand 
from him. 

He went one step further: The old man 
said that he had not read a single American 
newspaper since the war began, and that 
nothing but a German nev.^spaper should 
cross his threshold until the war ended. 
Not until that banker descended upon this 
pro-German with the indignation of an out- 
raged patriot did the rich old farmer capit- 
ulate. 

The story of that German is typical. He 
came to this country about 1859. When the 
homestead act was passed he received from 
the United States one hundred and sixty 
acres of land in the very centre of one of 
the richest States in this Union, and his one 
hundred and sixty acre farm is now worth 
about $100,000. 

When he ran away from Germany he 
185 



" Over Here " 

was receiving twenty cents a day. He rose 
at daybreak, cleaned stables, milked cows, 
toiled in the field, began his milking after 
dark, worked sixteen hours a day, had noth- 
ing to eat except what could not be sold by 
his employer. He was a German plebeian, 
with no chance ever to improve his condi- 
tion. He was ignorant, stupid, a mere beast 
of burden. 

So the German boy slipped across the line 
into Holland, came steerage to this country, 
slept among the rats of the ship, but the 
people of the United States welcomed that 
miserable refugee. The American school, 
without any charge, gave him four months' 
instruction every winter until he was twenty. 
The American people gave him a farm as 
a free gift. This Kepublic educated his chil- 
dren, his grandchildren and enriched them 
with land, office, honours and wealth. Once 
he hated autocracy and militarism in the 
Fatherland — but in 1918 he loved them. 

No sooner did the Kaiser invade Belgium 
and commit rape upon that land than this 
German farmer passed through a revulsion. 
Whatever the Kaiser did was right. If 
Germany did a thing it was proper. Ger- 
many had a right to break her solemn 
1 86 



" Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth " 

treaties ; Germany had a right to sink the 
Lusitania / if Germany was out of iron ore 
she had a right to invade France and steal 
her iron mines. "What had been crimes sud- 
denly became virtues. 

Fleeing from the German tyrant in 1859, 
in 1918 the old farmer turned upon the 
United States that had befriended him. 

" If I have to make my choice, I choose 
the Kaiser." 

Mentally, it seems absurd. Morally, his 
was a monstrous position. But blood was 
thicker than water. Gratitude had no place 
in his heart. 

This old German regarded the gift of his 
farm by our people as a sign of weakness. 
The Kepublic gave him a homestead because 
he was a superior man. He actually had a 
belief that Germany would soon overrun the 
world ; that the Kaiser would soon be en- 
throned in "Washington ; that some German 
in Iowa would supersede the Government in 
Des Moines, and he was simply getting ready, 
having made friends with the Kaiser's Gov- 
ernment, to receive reward when the United 
States became a German colony. 

"Who can explain the obsession ? 

It is clear that the German- Americans had 
187 



" Over Here " 

been drilled for forty years through their 
German newspapers in these ideas. Little 
by little they have been alienated from the 
institutions of the Kepublic. Slowly they 
have been led to believe that Berlin is soon 
to be a world capital and Kaiser Wilhelm 
the world emperor, while only Germans 
shall be allowed in this country to hold 
office or land, while all Americans become 
tenants and servitors thereto. 

Plainly this is what Siebert meant in his 
book, published five years ago in Berlin : 

" When we have reached our goal Ger- 
many must see to it that no race save the 
German race can have a title deed in land 
or carry weapons, just as in the first world 
empire no one but a Koman was allowed to 
own land or have a sword or spear." 

7. In Praise of Our Secret Service 
Of necessity our Secret Service work is 
carried on in silence and without blare of 
trumpets. The achievements of the Depart- 
ment of Justice cannot be proclaimed from 
the housetops. Everybody knows some- 
thing about the crimes committed by the 
German agents. These spies, loyal with 
their lips, have in their hearts plotted in- 
188 



in Praise of Our Secret Service 

numerable crimes against our Government. 
They have dynamited our factories and 
warehouses ; they have burned shops and 
planted bombs on ships ; they have thrown 
trains from the track; they have poisoned 
the horses and mules upon the transports en 
route to France ; they have fouled the 
springs of knowledge through their hired 
reporters ; with all the cunning developed by 
long practice, they have spread their insidious 
and perilous influences into the remotest 
regions of the land. But over against these 
spies and secret agents have stood the 
TJnited States Secret Service men, and with 
everything in favour of the German plotter, 
our defenders have beaten the German at 
his own game. 

War was declared against Germany on 
April 6, 1917. One Sunday night two or 
three weeks later a large company of Ger- 
man-Americans belonging to the secret Ger- 
man league met in their accustomed place of 
assembly. There were several hundred Ger- 
mans present, but among them were three 
Secret Service men. The German lawyer 
who opened the meeting was very bitter. 
Having made certain that only German 
sympathizers were present, he went on to 
189 



" Over Here " 

say that the occasion of this war could be 
traced to Wall Street. Certain rich bankers 
and American plutocrats had loaned perhaps 
a billion dollars to England. Since the war 
was going against England, these rich men 
were afraid that they would lose their invest- 
ment. In their emergency they forced war 
upon Congress. The speech was clever, 
specious, cunning, shrewdly calculated to stir 
up passion. And the speech was applauded 
to the echo. The second speaker made a no 
less skillful appeal to the prejudices of the 
members of the secret German-American 
league. Since the war was a money war, 
originated by Wall Street, the Government 
could be defeated as to its plans only by 
money. Therefore, every member of the 
league must make his contribution ; no one 
present but must give at least ten dollars. 
And, he added, in view of the fact that it 
was Sunday night and that some might be 
without money, and since no checks could be 
accepted, there were several German bankers 
present, who would be glad to advance 
money to the members who wished to make 
cash contributions. The Germans had pro- 
vided in advance against every possible 
emergency. 

190 



In Praise of Our Secret Service 

Then came the opportunity for the Secret 
Service men. The first one arose and began 
with an apology for a German brogue that 
in reality he was assuming. He spared no 
words in praising the first two speakers. 
" What a wonderful man was the Kaiser 1 
What victories von Hindenburg had 
achieved ! The Fatherland was standing 
with back against the wall. How wicked a 
nation was France, and Poland! What a 
black heart England had ! " He pictured 
Germany as a lamb with fleece as white as 
snow, and a huge Belgian wolf jumping at 
the lamb's tender throat. " What an ambi- 
tious man was President Wilson. How 
eagerly had Congress waited until Germany 
was weak, and then rushed in to grab the 
fruits of war ! " When this man sat down 
his hearers were in a state of rapturous up- 
heaval. But scarcely had his voice ceased 
echoing in the air when the second Secret 
Service man arose. Having complimented 
the first two speeches by the German plot- 
ters, he said that he thought he represented 
the members in expressing the judgment that 
the third speaker had made a speech that 
was unrivalled in its statement as to the duty 
of the members toward the Kaiser and the 
191 



'* Over Here " 

beloved Fatherland. The second Secret 
Service man, therefore, moved that it be the 
sense of the meeting that the member who 
had just spoken be made secretary of the 
meeting, be custodian of the funds just con- 
tributed. In five minutes he had all the 
secrets of the meeting safely lodged in the 
hands of the first Secret Service man. At 
this point the third representative of the 
Government arose and nominated the second 
Secret Service speaker, who had just taken 
his seat, as teller to count the funds, and in 
recognition of this man's gifts the teller im- 
mediately afterwards appointed the third 
Secret Service man assistant teller. During 
the next three hours, in the secrecy of their 
own meeting, over twenty prosperous and 
influential Germans committed themselves 
against this Government. 

About midnight the secretary and the two 
tellers turned over to the two Germans who 
had made the two big speeches at the open- 
ing of the meeting the entire collection, 
which amounted to thousands of dollars. 
But at half -past twelve, as these two Ger- 
mans were entering their hotel, four Secret 
Service men tapped them on the shoulder 
and promptly relieved them of the afore- 
192 



In Praise of Our Secret Service 

mentioned thousands. One of these men is 
now working out his sentence in a Southern 
penitentiary and the other in a Western 
penitentiary. Their sentences were for 
twenty-eight years. The other men who 
defended Germany and attacked the United 
States are serving terms — some long and 
some short. It is a proverb that the wicked 
flee when no man pursueth. But Dr. Park- 
hurst coined a striking sentence when he 
added : " The wicked man makes better 
time in fleeing when the righteous Secret 
Service man pursues him with a sharp stick." 



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